Most employed workers have to pay payroll taxes from payday to payday, so your state (if applicable), federal, local (if applicable), social security and Medicare taxes are directly taken out of your paycheck. For some people, this means that come tax season they might be due a refund for various reasons, but typically when you get a refund, you are merely getting back taxes that have already been taken from you, so you are simply getting your own earned monies back! For other people, that didn't have enough withheld, or for other reasons, they will instead have to pay additional taxes on top of the taxes already withheld, while for others that aren't receiving a steady paycheck but perhaps making their monies thru dividends, there will be quarterly estimated taxes due. In any event, if you work in America, there is a good chance that you are paying taxes to the Man, and that's the way it has been for a while.
Let's consider though publically owned for-profit corporations and their tax liabilities. Corporations, for their own reasons, like to be considered legally to be people, in which corporations received this extraordinary ruling from the misapplication of a headnote to a Supreme Court Case of 1886, in which the headnote stated “Corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” As they say, be careful what you wish for, as these types of dubious rulings can be dual-edge swords. Corporations have benefited, profited and become more powerful because of this legal designation, allowing corporations the freedom of speech, or an undue and unmerited influence to lobby and undermine; corporations are able to defend themselves better against libel because their resources and power are nearly unlimited in regards to their legal powers and legal maneuvering as compared to their opponents who are limited and circumspect often due to their inabilities of proper funding, time, and legal experience; and finally large corporations which have global footprints are often beyond the control and the powers of their own home national government and consequently corporations will set the national standards as to their own benefits and desires and therefore corrupt and compromise national sovereignty.
However, the IRS makes it clear in regards to the Foreign Income Tax Exclusion that "If you are a U.S. citizen or a resident alien of the United States and you live abroad, you are taxed on your worldwide income." Instead, corporations hide their overseas profits through foreign subsidiaries in which these profits are taxed at either a significantly lower tax liability, or if the profits are held overseas they might not be subject to U.S. taxes at all. The WSJ reported on March 10, 2013 that in its: "survey of new regulatory filings found that the total earnings held by the 60 companies' foreign subsidiaries rose 15%, to $1.3 trillion, from $1.13 trillion a year earlier".
There isn't any doubt that these truly massive and powerful corporations have the world's best lawyers, lobbyists, & accountants, and are expertly skilled at avoiding, delaying, hiding, and moving any corporate tax liabilities for their own corporate benefit. It shouldn't be that way. If they are people, as they previously have been legally defined, their tax obligations should be the same as the people's tax obligations and it is high time for America to throw down the gauntlet and therefore to bring back home more fairness to our tax code.