Accumulated profits tax

What does Accumulated profits tax mean in American Law?

The definition of Accumulated profits tax in the law of the United States, as defined by the lexicographer Arthur Leff in his legal dictionary is:

A way of referring to those provisions of [the] Internal Revenue Code designed to penalize corporations which accumulate earnings beyond the needs of the business so as to avoid distributions to shareholders, who would thereupon be taxed on what they had received. It is a particular temptation to a close corporation so to accumulate, because the accumulated profits go to increase the value of the corporate stock which, when sold, will be taxed to the corporate owners only at ordinarily

much lower capital gains rates. The tax law provisions are very intricate.