Lots of "shareholders" are people's retirement funds, pensions, and the like. When those funds finally pay out, they get taxed as income just like for everybody else.
Saying that Uncle Scrooge and his buddies own all the stocks is not much worse than implying that normal people own a significant share of the market through their retirement accounts.
Each of the 90 people invest $5k and have 1000 stoks.
Each of the 9 people invest $20k and have 4000 stoks.
The millionaire invests $100k and has 20,000 stoks.
The top 10% have 99.96% of the stoks.
It would be weird if the richest people didn't own most of the stocks. It doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem.
The underlying issue seems to be whether it is ethical for a business owner to make money.
Payroll, benefits, offices, etc are easily >50% of revenue in virtually all ventures (including diamond trade and definitely your favourite tech unicorn)
Also implicit in this statement I think, is the assumption that shareholders don't provide as much value to the business, or perhaps the economy writ large. Arguably the investors at least initially play a more crucial role than any employee no mater how back-breaking their work because without starting capital most businesses don't even get started in the first place. But in general all aspects of the business contribute to success, Shareholders, employees, and executive. I don't think moralizing one class over another is useful to this sort of conversation.
By that same logic, taxing personal income is akin to taking money away from the goods/services/investments that that person would've spent that foregone income.
There's nothing special about businesses that warrants them special privileges.
Money goes into the business, gets taxed, and then goes to employees and taxed again or to shareholders as profits and taxed again.
Why tax twice?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think payroll expenses are not a part of profit, so no double taxation here.
The point is that any money that exits a corporation gets taxed again somewhere.
So if a company does really well one year and makes a profit, it gets taxed on that profit even if it keeps it in the bank. Then they use that remaining profit to pay payroll next year and then employees or owners get taxed again.
But your point on double-taxation is certainly valid in some contexts.
Franking credits minimise the double taxation issue in these instances.
Double taxation is the concept where a dollar could, in theory, be taxed at over 100% from the aggregation of taxes owed on it. There are to my knowledge only two real examples of double taxation in America. The first happens due to the new cap on SALT deductions. The second is with regards to FICA taxes.
Oversimplified:
Profit = $Revenue - $Expenses
Tax = $profit % $Tax_rate
Because a business isn't a person. Taxing a business is taking real money away from payrolls, money that would get taxed again anyway once it was paid out.
Corporate income tax only makes sense when you look at it as a barrier to entry for competition in the marketplace. Big companies like Netflix know how to avoid taxes. Small companies don't. Thus corporate income taxes help to protect big companies from disruption by small ones.