Depending on where the Corporation does business, there may be an additional state tax.Furthermore, there may be an additional tax if there are dividends passed by the corp to the owners/shareholders.

He is a CEO and large shareholder for a biotech company that is funded by venture capital and government grants, until they get their product approved by the FDA.

Aren’t many of these publicly owned companies, which are actually owned by shareholders (ie more people), so that’s profit that gets paid out in dividends and potentially increase in value overtime in the form of returns as they go up in price?

Equating this to communism is nonsense.The "co-purchase with 45% of equity" idea sounds to me like the government operating like a business -- re-investing proceeds into its operations rather than distributing them to its shareholders. 

And you should do up a shareholder agreement to define what happens with the company in the event one shareholder wants to sell or passes away, etc. 

PA has closed some of the loopholes around it, you will be paying a transfer tax.According to the PA DOR web site:Some real estate transfers are exempt from realty transfer tax, including certain transfers among family members, to governmental units, between religious organizations, to shareholders or partners and to or from nonprofit industrial development agencies.

Two things: 1) You will eventually benefit from electing S -Corp for your flipping entity to save SE taxes when you will start making more money. 2) General, right now,  your contracting company would not benefit from electing S Corp as most of the service company where primary revenue driver is a sole shareholder would not benefit from S elections.

Does an LLC offer more legal protection if there is more than 1 owner?  Like if I gave my brother a 0.01% share does that do anything to help or hurt things?  I could see it might compromise pass through tax status, b...

Hi,  I am the sole owner of 2 (6 unit ) apartments, that I have owned for 30+ years, I am in a real estate family and currently also a 32% shareholder in a couple of family LLC's .

This simply allows for a better quarterly profit report to show share holders.