Conventional conservative/capitalist wisdom is that corporations "don't pay taxes" because they just "pass it along to consumers as higher prices". That's why the juxtaposition here, that they are spending tens of millions to influence elections, is important. If corporations were just efficient market operators that moved goods and services, why so much lobbying? It's because the rich owners of corporations realized that with a small tweak, which we know retroactively as "Citizens United vs FEC", they could harness their corporate ownership to control the political, social, and governance landscape of the world.