The uncomfortable truth hiding behind the “tax the rich” bumper sticker.
There is a political fairy tale that refuses to die.
It goes something like this: somewhere in America there is a large vault, probably guarded by a cartoon billionaire wearing a top hat, packed wall-to-wall with unused money. If only the government would pry open that vault, we could fund everything, lower costs for everyone, and make life fair by lunchtime.
It is emotionally satisfying. It is morally simple. It fits nicely on a protest sign.
It is also how adults end up making tax policy with the economic sophistication of a middle-school bake sale.
The truth is far less comforting: corporations and billionaires may write the check, but they rarely eat the tax. They collect it from the rest of us through higher prices, lower wages, fewer jobs, reduced investment, slower innovation, or relocation. The legal taxpayer and the real taxpayer are often not the same person.
That is not ideology. That is tax incidence. And tax incidence is the part of economics politicians pretend not to understand because it ruins the speech.
Corporations are not people, but people pay their taxes
A corporation does not feel pain. It does not skip a vacation. It does not wonder whether it can afford groceries. A corporation is a legal structure.
When government raises taxes on a business, that business has options. It can raise prices. It can delay hiring. It can reduce wages or benefits over time. It can automate. It can move investment somewhere else. It can trim product quality. It can pass the burden to shareholders. Usually, it does some combination of those things.
The National Bureau of Economic Research has studied corporate taxes and retail prices using barcode-level product data. The researchers found that approximately half of corporate tax incidence falls on consumers through higher prices. That means when the government claims it is taxing the corporation, the customer is often standing quietly at the register holding the bag. Literally. (NBER)
Another study in the American Economic Review found that workers bore about one-half of the total corporate tax burden in the form of lower wages in the German data studied, with low-skilled, young, and female workers taking a larger hit. So much for sticking it to the boardroom. Sometimes the boardroom sends the bill downstairs.
The OECD has also found that corporate taxes are among the most harmful major taxes for economic growth, followed by personal income taxes. Why? Because taxes on income and capital punish the very activity that produces growth: work, investment, expansion, risk-taking, and innovation. (OECD)
In other words, if you tax the seed corn, don’t act shocked when the harvest looks a little thin.
Apple vs. Walmart: the progressive blind spot
Here is where the politics gets especially amusing.
Progressives love to beat up Walmart. The Walton family is a permanent villain in the economic morality play. Walmart is accused of low wages, crushing small businesses, exploiting communities, and probably causing bad weather if you give the activist class enough time and grant funding.
But Apple? Apple gets a pass.
Apple sells luxury electronics, much of it manufactured through overseas supply chains, wrapped in minimalist packaging and spiritual branding. It sells $1,000-plus phones to people who often finance them through carriers, payment plans, and locked-in ecosystems. Somehow that is treated as enlightened capitalism because the store has blonde wood tables and the employees wear matching shirts.
Let’s look at the numbers.
Walmart reported $713.163 billion in total revenue for fiscal year 2026 and $21.893 billion in net income attributable to Walmart. That works out to a net profit margin of about 3.1%. Walmart’s business model is massive volume and thin margins. It sells groceries, diapers, medicine, school supplies, socks, oil filters, toilet paper, and all the other glamorous items that keep normal households functioning. (Walmart News & Leadership)
Apple, by contrast, reported $416.161 billion in net sales for fiscal year 2025 and $112.010 billion in net income, a net profit margin of about 26.9%. Apple is not scraping nickels out of the couch cushions. Apple is printing money with rounded corners. (Q4 Capital)
Now ask yourself: if a new tax is imposed, who has more room to absorb it without changing prices?
A company with a 27% net margin?
Or a retailer making roughly 3 cents of profit on every dollar of sales?
This is where the “tax greedy corporations” slogan runs into the wall. Walmart’s margins are thin because it competes on price. That is the whole business model. Raise its costs and those costs eventually show up somewhere: higher shelf prices, lower investment, fewer labor hours, less expansion, fewer stores, more automation, or pressure on suppliers.
And who shops at Walmart?
Not billionaires browsing for yacht polish.
Regular people. Working families. Retirees. Young parents. People trying to stretch a paycheck. The very people progressives claim to be defending are often the first ones hit when costs are pushed through the system.
Apple, meanwhile, has a much fatter margin and a much more affluent customer base, but also a brilliant trick: it has turned expensive phones into a social necessity. Counterpoint Research reported that the global smartphone average selling price hit a record first-quarter high of $364 in Q1 2025, while Apple’s performance was driven by premiumization and iPhone demand. (Counterpoint Research) Another 2025 market summary reported the average iPhone selling price around $816, while Samsung’s average selling price was around $326. (Android Kenya)
So let’s be honest. Walmart sells necessities at thin margins. Apple sells status, ecosystem lock-in, and upgraded cameras at premium margins.
Yet somehow Walmart is the villain and Apple is the lifestyle brand of the enlightened class.
That is not economics. That is vibes wearing a Patagonia vest.
The iPhone morality problem
This is where the hypocrisy really starts glowing like a new OLED screen.
The same crowd that lectures America about corporate greed will line up to finance a phone that costs more than some families’ monthly rent. They will condemn Walmart for selling affordable goods, then praise Apple for selling imported luxury devices with software locks, subscription services, and annual upgrade pressure.
Apple is brilliant. I am not knocking the business model. It is one of the most successful companies in world history. But let’s not pretend it is a monastery with a charging port.
Apple’s fiscal 2025 gross margin was 46.9%, with Services gross margin even higher. Walmart’s gross profit rate is much lower, and its net margin is barely over 3%. (Q4 Capital)
So when politicians talk about raising corporate taxes, they pretend all corporations are Apple. In reality, many are much closer to Walmart: high volume, thin margin, fierce competition, endless cost pressure.
Tax Apple and maybe some of it hits shareholders. Tax Walmart and you may have just raised the price of cereal, socks, and baby formula.
Congratulations. You taxed the rich and collected from a single mom buying groceries. Champagne socialism strikes again, except the champagne was purchased with EBT-adjacent economics.
Taxes do not stay where politicians put them
The core mistake is assuming taxes are static.
Politicians draw a box around a group and say, “We will tax them.” Then economists, business owners, workers, consumers, and anyone who has ever paid a bill all ask the same question: “Then what happens?”
People adjust.
Businesses adjust.
Capital adjusts.
Consumers adjust.
High earners adjust.
That is human nature, not a loophole.
NBER research on taxation and innovation reviews the ways tax policy affects the quantity and quality of innovation, the movement of inventors and firms, business dynamism, productivity, and the direction of research. Innovation is not a magic mist that floats over high-tax states because the legislature passed a resolution about equity. It is produced by people and firms making risky decisions with limited time, money, and patience. (NBER)
Raise the cost of risk-taking and you get less risk-taking.
Raise the cost of hiring and you get less hiring.
Raise the cost of investment and you get less investment.
Raise the cost of staying and eventually people leave.
This should not be controversial. It is how humans work. Put a higher price on something and you usually get less of it. Unless it is government failure, in which case Oregon keeps ordering the family-size platter.
Oregon should be paying attention
This matters in Oregon because Oregon is unusually dependent on income taxes. The state has no general sales tax, so it leans heavily on personal and corporate income taxes. That makes the state budget especially vulnerable when high earners, business owners, and prime-working-age residents leave or stop growing here.
The Tax Foundation lists Oregon’s top individual income tax rate at 9.9%, its top corporate income tax rate at 7.6%, and notes that Oregon also imposes a gross receipts tax on top of the corporate income tax. Oregon ranks 35th overall on the 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index. (Tax Foundation)
Portland makes the problem worse. The Tax Foundation found that Portland’s combined top marginal tax rate on wage income is about 14.77%, near the highest in the country. For pass-through businesses, Portland ranked even worse in that analysis. (Tax Foundation)
That matters because high earners and business owners are not fence posts. They can move.
Recent Oregon Journalism Project reporting found that Oregonians in their prime earning years are moving out faster than similar-aged people are moving in. The story also notes the obvious fiscal problem: Oregon relies heavily on income taxes, so losing workers in peak earning years means less revenue for public services. (Oregon Journalism Project)
This is not a theory. This is the tax base walking out the door with a U-Haul reservation.
And yes, people move for many reasons: housing, schools, crime, jobs, family, lifestyle, retirement, and quality of life. Taxes are not the only factor. But when taxes are high, services are underwhelming, housing is expensive, and economic opportunity is weaker, pretending taxes do not matter is just denial with a county-issued name badge.
The New York warning label
New York is now playing with a second-home wealth tax, a “pied-à-terre” tax aimed at expensive second homes. Politically, it sounds perfect: tax rich people’s extra homes. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, the New York City Comptroller’s April 2026 analysis found that while the tax could theoretically raise about $500 million, that estimate becomes less certain after accounting for exclusions and behavioral responses. The realistic estimate could fall to roughly $340 million to $380 million. (Walmart News & Leadership)
That is what always happens when static revenue fantasies meet living, breathing taxpayers.
The spreadsheet says: “Tax rich people.”
The rich person says: “My accountant has entered the chat.”
The real tax collector
This is the part progressives do not want to admit.
Corporations are not bottomless pits of unused money. Wealthy people are not stationary revenue piñatas. Tax policy changes behavior. Sometimes it changes prices. Sometimes it changes wages. Sometimes it changes investment. Sometimes it changes where people live.
The government may impose the tax, but corporations and high earners often become collection agents.
Walmart collects it through prices.
Employers collect it through slower wage growth or fewer jobs.
Apple collects it through premium pricing and financing plans.
Landlords collect it through rent.
Contractors collect it through bids.
Small businesses collect it through higher service costs.
And when enough productive people leave, the state collects it through decline.
That is the reality hiding behind “tax the rich.” It does not mean the rich pay nothing. It means the burden does not stop with them just because a politician said so at a podium.
The bottom line
The fantasy says we can raise taxes on corporations and billionaires and harvest free money without consequences.
The reality says taxes move.
They move into prices. They move into wages. They move into hiring decisions. They move into investment choices. They move into innovation. And sometimes they move across state lines.
Oregon should understand this better than most. A state that relies heavily on income taxes cannot afford to chase away high earners, business owners, and prime-working-age workers while pretending the budget will somehow be rescued by moral slogans and another tax measure.
Billionaires do pay some taxes. Corporations do pay some taxes.
But far more often than politicians admit, they also collect them.
And when the bill finally arrives, it is usually handed to the same people the politicians promised to protect.
That’s not just my viewpoint, that is an economic reality.
Fine more of my opinions backed by facts over at Ben’s Viewpoint on Substack.
About the Author
Discover more from Right Now Oregon
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
