Yep, the current corporate tax laws basically punish single-nation companies, while giving multinationals a free pass. International tax laws desperately need an overhaul.
The amount of human time and energy wasted on taxation is mind bogglingly stupid.
Politicians trying to influence the behavior of their minions by designing these convoluted "tax-based incentive" schemes is the whole problem in the first place.
Just tax all money that comes into anyones hands at say 30% and let the market decide what activity is most efficient for the world.
Then maybe the 500 million intelligent people working around the globe as tax authorities, tax attorneys, tax lobbyists, tax preparers, tax accountants, and tax consultants...could spend their time doing more useful things for humanity.
Fraudsters skirted that by keeping their corporation's assets on the books and expensing everything, never actually receiving/spending anything themselves.
Instead of distributing profits to shareholders, is Microsoft going to buy 1,000,000 BMWs for their investors and hold them on their books as company cars to dodge taxes? Not practical.
No thanks, you have no right to tell us (Switzerland) how much taxes we have to pay. First fix your own US-tax-system.
EDIT: I think he meant that:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/apr/11/bidens-plan...
Enforced by whom?
Why would a developing country want to tax companies at the same level if they're trying to attract investments? Anyway, why should any country listen to any other country on what the tax rate should be?
Why should a company be forced to pay tax on foreign income if the country in which they supposedly made that income doesn't want to them to pay taxes?
The worst part is that this comment starts with "simply enforce"
The point of removing corporate tax is to not tax companies at all. Remove the decision of how to position your country against others altogether.
You could enforce these things by creating a free-trade area for anybody who joins, and excluding or putting stiff tariffs on those who don't.
Then you need those free trade agreements. Remember the last time when it was only between EU and US? Protests in many European countries and in the end Trump decided to break it off.
Why is there not a focus on countries such as Bermuda here? They are the "tax havens" who make this possible in the first place.
There is. Two wrongs don't make a right. The topic at hand is Ireland.
> Other countries are perfectly entitled to do similarly, as Netherlands does.
If every country acted the same way, there would not be a single functioning nation on earth. Their benefits only exist because other countries are losing out, which makes them parasites.
Holy hyperbole, Batman.
No, it would just mean that there would be a homogeneous corporate tax system, which is what people seem to always argue for.
'Parasites' is also a ridiculous description.
We can argue about what's "fair" all day, but "inexpensive" is more objective: some taxes hamper more economic activity than others. A $1 tax on a stock trade will reduce exactly $1 of economic activity. It's so expensive, it's basically pointless. A land value tax, on the other land, is almost free. (And in some cases, negative!)
Most taxes fall somewhere between these two extremes, but corporate income taxes are one of the most expensive, which is why economists aren't big fans of them.
Countries like Ireland and the Netherlands are nothing more than tax avoidance puppets of a few big companies. And the sad thing is that their governments think it's good what they do while it's a downwards spiral instead.
Of course, Irish citizens could vote to withdraw from the EU and set their own tax that way, but that's not likely - they generally accept that the benefits of participating in the EU are worth giving up a little sovereignty.