lets say that an employee at walmart puts on his vest & during his shift he robbed a bank. according to your logic, walmart would owe that bank however much their employee stole. in reality, the employee is liable, not walmart. thats bcause the employee willfully comitted the crime & walmart did not order him to or threaten him into doing it
Actually I'd imagine that to make walmart liable you'd just need to prove that the employee was acting to further walmart (their employer)'s interests, regardless of whether it was authorised or not. In fact even if an employee does something that their employer has specifically told them not to do, the employer could still be held liable by the person who suffers damage, providing they can show that.
as for ACORN, they didnt order their employees to create fake documents nor did they threaten them into doing it. teh employees did it themselves by their choice, & therefore, are reasponsible for it.
Just because you didn't order an employee to do something, doesn't mean you're not responsible. If failings in your management have resulted in wrongful/illegal action taking place by your employees, that is a failing of your organisation, and hence you have some responsibility. Furthermore, referring back to the previous point, if those employees are acting in the organisations interests, again that organisation can be held responsible for the employees actions. So, a milkman who hires a child to do some of their work for them against instructions from their employer could result in the employer being held liable (since the milkman is undertaking that action for the benefit of the employer), while a miner who decides to light up a cigarrette by a mine (+causes an explosion that destroys a nearby home) probably wouldn't cause his employer to be liable (as lighting a cigarrette wouldn't have been in the employers interests).
So they make 250K a year, that means 125K is spent on buying the stock they sell... than you have the renting of a store, lets say a modest 36k, then there have a bunch of taxes and administrative expenses... and then there is barely anything left to pay even a single employee, much less making the owner RICH
As I mentioned elsewhere, Obama is almost certainly talking about profit not turnover. I.e. expenses such as purchasing stock, paying rent on your shop space, and hiring employees, would be taken off your turnover before determining tax.