And if you incorporated your ebay business, it would likely pay very little in taxes too. But then you'd take the same income as wages and pay the same income taxes you did before you had a legal title on your business.

But couldn't you keep that money in a bank account and spend it on 'business expenses' without paying yourself a wage?

At least in the Netherlands, that is not allowed. With an LLC you have to give yourself a living wage. Also, if you mark them as profit (not pay them to your employee (yourself)) you have to pay corporate tax. You also can't just deduct your breakfast.

What if you share your breakfast with your spouse who also happens to be an employee? Then breakfast is actually a meeting!

In fairness most corporations shouldn't be paying taxes... their investors and customers do though. Also, corporations shouldn't have legal "personhood" or rights to invest in political agendas either. Also, corporate owned property that is unutilized or underutilized should probably be subject to forfeiture for better use.

But that's because I feel that corporations should be mostly about collective ownership and protection from direct liability. It shouldn't be a carte blance.

Well, whether or not corporate income taxation is a good thing or not is up for debate, and it has to do with your own politics. However, I think it's crazy that we have it written in law that corporations should pay income tax, but there's enough lawyers and loopholes that 1/5 of them don't. Meanwhile making some side-cash on ebay could possibly garner attention from the IRS..? It's a misalignment of incentives.

A VAT and tax on currency exchanges instead of income taxes would probably work out better all around... But that would be a huge shift. But in general, corporations serve as collective ownership and have dividends, labor, and other purchases and expenses. These can/should be taxed.. but income tax on a corporation is kind of counter-intuitive to me, only because a "corporation" doesn't actually pay tax, it's their customers. It doesn't come from, or go to nowhere.

Just because you got money from eBay instead of a jobby-job doesn't not make it income. I think there's exceptions on this sort of stuff, though.