All your experience aside. I can tell you I am a business and I, not you or anyone else pays my taxes...Who pays your taxes?
As an example, was there an immediate rise in transportation costs to offset the escalating price of fuel?...NO!...Will all companies raise their prices or will some absorb the cost in reduced profits?...The same is true of taxes.
If companies could automatically raise their prices for taxes, what's stopping them from raising them for no reason?
What stops them is the fundamental law of supply and demand. Almost every company raises their prices as high as the market will allow. Optimized pricing sometimes requires complex econometrics, but even small businesses practice the theory, by pricing a product, then if sales are slow having "sales" to discount the price to increase demand. Businesses that don't do this well go out of business.
You think that you pay your taxes because you have made the simple error of thinking your money belongs to you. The mere fact you earned the money doesn't make it yours--just ask the government.