"Your fundamental misunderstanding is that you believe profit (and thus the tax on it) is an expense/cost of production."
Your fundamental misunderstanding is the inability to distinguish between profit and tax EXPENSE. They are not indistinguishable, your efforts to pretend otherwise notwithstanding. There is both pre-tax and post tax profit, but neither is inseperable from tax EXPENSE.
"When your accountant prepares you tax return he does not include income tax as an expense."
When an accountant prepares a tax return, it is for the sole purpose of determining what the taxes due are. What you are saying is that income taxes are not a deductible expense for tax computation purposes. Well, DUUUUH!! I wonder why.
I would direct your attention to the second page of Intel's annual report, more specifically the second page, which is the income statement, and even more specifically to the three lines entitled "income before taxes, provision for taxes, net income".
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/50863/000089161805000821/f12965e10vq.htm
Please also note that the income statement starts with net revenue and subtracts a number of expense items to arrive at the bottom line - net income. One of the items that is SUBTRACTED is "provision for taxes". By definition, anything that is subtracted from revenue to arrive at net income is an EXPENSE.
Can we make this any clearer, hardhead? This stuff isn't nearly as hard as you are making it.
I wonder why some posters hide their real reason for opposing tax reform?
Could it be that juststayinatextbook has such minimal experience in the real world that he really didn't know this? No, nobody is that ignorant. He's just lying about his real reason for rejecting reform.
You have not shown me where income taxes are a cost of production which has been my entire point. Tax returns allow deduction of costs of production not income taxes.
Who has claimed companies don't make provisions for paying taxes and report on those provisions?