Sophistry. Compensation is compensation, whether it comes from ownership or benefits or hard cash. And yes, I’ve seen your argument about how selling shares impacts company value. Fine, just give the option to pay the tax in kind, then. Let the government own small chunks of Amazon or Berkshire or whatever.
And remember, the reason that company is so valuable in the first place is that it took advantage of society in some way. Monopoly or monopsony practices (both in different arenas, in the case of Amazon). Regulatory capture. Pollution. Patent hoarding. Using contractors instead of employees to avoid paying benefits. High powered lobbying. Using bankruptcy law in ways not available to poorer folks. Tax avoidance (certainly using legal methods, maybe illegal ones too). The possible ways that a big enough company can rig the system to its own advantage are nearly endless, and they all have negative effects on the rest of society to some extent. “Smart dude has idea” gets you a successful company with millionaire owners; “company warps the system to its own benefit” gets you mega-corporations with owners worth billions.