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The difference is HUGE and most will readily see it but I'm quite sure that you and a few others here will continue to be completely obtuse.

Indeed they are huge, as whether a business has a reportable profit on which an income tax may be levied, the overhead costs that are associated with the minimization, determination and accounting/reporting of tax due if any or not, remains to impact the business and its operations.

Part is cost of compliance, the costs related to accounting, reporting and paying any tax due those as as whole exceed $200 billion each year, as much as $100 billion or more on the backs of business whether the business pay any tax at all.

Unfortuately it doesn't end there, additional cost arise in the business' legitimate and sometimes not so legitimate efforts in minimizing the federal tax bill. These are the costs assiociated with legal research and financial planning to arrange operations in such a way as to shelter earnings from the tax lay and to put off or defer payment of taxes. I may include efforts to relocate parts or all of a business outside the jurisdiction of tax authorities or to convert earnings into deductible assets that do not add to production but merely act a repositories to reduce the tax bill.

Additionally are those overhead costs that inevitably arise when the IRS disagrees with a business in what constitutes taxable income or discovers the not so legitimate sheltering of earnings and business operations for the IRS axe. These enforcement costs include all the loss to business and production due to forced collections, compling with audits, the legal fees in defending the business from the rapatious administrative and legal manuvers of IRS investigation and DOJ court actions, with the legal costs, court fees, fines and penalties that arise out of these actions.

Other overhead costs include the cost arising out of tax code disincentive to efficient production in avoiding or not reporting that next dollar of earnings for the increase in tax that it will engender, the purchasing of that deductible equipment or latest and greatest write off the tax account suggests is the best thing to go for sheltering income from the tax bite, but ends up subtracting from the bottom line and fails miserably to meet the promises of all the hype.

The costs imposed by the float that must be maintained in estimated tax payments against future tax due that could otherwise be applied to productive business use, the excess held out of production against the uncertainties in estimating that future tax dollar due as the tax code changes or just is not that clear as to how the IRS and courts will interpret what a business sees as a legitimate deductible cost of doing business.

Finally or the costs of loss of sales out of having to increase the price of ones products in the attempt to recover the above impositions on one's business.The loss of demand for your product arising out of the inevitable response of consumers to a price higher than they feel your product is worth to them or because another business pushing the code harder than you offer product at lower price.

All these costs on business are a matter of everyday operating expense that businesses incur out of the complexities of the income/payroll tax system and effect the price of goods and services as well as wages to labor and bottom line return to the investor. All together with actual tax paid reflect the ultimate price the household must pay for an inefficient and comples tax system that is the federal income/payroll tax system we have all come to know and gripe about.

Top candidate for the understatement of the 20th century:

"A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man's business; the eye of the federal inspector will be in every man's counting house....The law will of necessity have inquisical features, it will provide penalties, it will create complicated machinery. Under it men will be hauled into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the tax payer. An army of federal inspectors, spies, and detectives will descend upon the state."
-- Virginian House Speaker Richard E. Byrd, 1910, predicting the consequences of an income tax.