Suppose you open a car dealership that gives every person who buys a car a share of the dealership. The next thing you know that dealership has the best service and the lowest prices and makes no profits, because all the owners are also customers and they care less about getting a $10 dividend than about service quality and price.

So then the argument is they're under-charging themselves and they owe tax on the difference between what they charged themselves and the fair market value. But it turns out all the customers love this ownership structure and having to compete with it has caused all the other dealerships to lose business and cut prices, and two new independent dealerships with the same structure sprang up and are now charging similar prices, meanwhile several of the incumbents with the old structure have gone out of business.

So the question is, what's the market price? It's clearly lower than it was, even the old incumbents that are still around are charging less, and losing market share while doing it. If there are now multiple companies offering the razor thin margins, isn't that the new market price? It's a price available to any member of the public and it's what anybody has to compete with if they want to enter the market.

The argument that there is a difference between what they're charging and the market price is ignoring the fact that their aggressive competition has lowered the market price down to what they're charging. But if you try to compare with what rates were like in 1975 then you get a squirrely result.

It's the same problem as with any of it. The grey area covers the entire map. The price they're charging is reasonable -- someone could charge it and operate a sustainable business, and several people do. But somebody else argues that it used to be higher. They're both right, and that's why the entire concept is a farce.