Why are corporations treated like individuals?

Answer 1

A corporation is it's own entity just as a taxpayer is. Why would you want it any other way and how else would you do it?
I guess the main reason is so there can be shareholders.

Answer 2

I am answering this question in terms of the USA...

In 1886, the US Supreme Court in Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad ruled that a "juristic person" was entitled to protections afforded under the Fourteenth Amendment. Without explicitly saying that a corporation was a juristic person, the case set forth in motion the acepted belief that corporations were "persons" in the eyes of the law.

It is obvious that corporations are not actual "persons" but they do hold some of the rights that persons in the US have but not all of them. For example, a corporation can be sued in court like a person. However, a corporation cannot, say, practice religion. Moreover, corporations live in perpetuity until they are dissolved. The Coca-Cola corporation is far older than any person. Another example is that a corporation is a legal citizen of a given state.

When you consider that a corporation is made up of, say, several thousand people, you can make the leap that all those people make up a single entity--the corporation itself. If for example, someone wanted to sue the company, one wouldnt want to sue several thousand individuals. Moreover, when the corporation buys say a piece of land, the land is not owned by the thousand individuals. It is owned by the corporation.

Hopefully, it is a bit clearer why corporations are treated like individuals sometimes. In some ways they act like an individual person and have the rights afforded to one, like in property ownership. In others, like religion, they dont have the rights of a "person." (IBM can not mandate that all its employees be Christian...)