Like the sibling comment said, thats how stocks are supposed to work. The entire reason stocks have value is because you were entitled to a dividend. So that $75 would be shared among the people who own the stock.

Now if the stock entitles you to a dividend of $5/year of the company's profits, you then might say that the company's stock is with $25 (just an example). If you think the company may become more profitable, and start paying $6, you may decide the stock is worth $26, and the inverse is true as well. Transferring that ownership of the stock is taxed, naturally.

Now we now live in a world where the largest companies don't pay a dividend, and I'm not sure how much "potential dividend revenue" factors into company valuation, but, as I understand it, this is the "backbone" of how stocks work.

>and the much more reasonable thing to do is have the company pay me a salary out of its profits. Which is another, separate, taxed, transaction.

This is taxed separately however. There is no "double-tax" here as payments to employees aren't considered the company's profit. When the company pays its employees, it's taxed once (payroll tax). When the company pays it's owners it's taxed twice (Corporate tax, then dividend tax).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividend

It's not. The way public companies were designed to work, in theory, is the "owners" get a proportional slice of the profits of the company. That's what a dividend is. I simply described the simplest scenario - if it feels wrong to you, you should consider why that is so.

>But: no, I wouldn't lobby that I should be exempt from sales tax just because it's "double taxation."

I agree here, but in the case of the corporate tax, I think it should be eliminated because it just incentives companies to game the tax system and creates these awful headlines where "LARGE COMPANY PAID $0 IN TAXES" which is almost never accurate.