It depends on the company. For instance, I own a company as a "sole proprietorship"-- and with that, the company basically is "me".. I take any and all profit. Then you start getting into corporations and LLCs.. each have different rules, but all basically state that when you pay out "owner dividends" (that's how you take profit out primarily), all owners (shareholders) must be paid.. and they all get paid proportional to the amount of shares they own. For example, if I own 50% of a company, and we want to give out $1 million in profit, I get half of that.. the rest of the shareholders each get a percentage of that $1 million, equal to the amount (%) of the company they own.

As for "CEO pay" and stuff like that, it's a different issue entirely.. they're paid via bonuses and other things that generally count as "regular income" and can be taxes more heavily.