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Comment by diggernet | Hacker News Reader

That would instantly bankrupt every single company in the many industries with single-digit profit margins.

I would personally be in favor of a ~5% flat tax on corporate revenue across the board if it meant replacing the convoluted profit-based tax schemes that currently exist. The costs of compliance and "tax minimization" are already a couple percent of revenue for many companies, so replacing that cost seems very reasonable.

That would adversely affect new businesses and discourage competition for well-entrenched businesses. The net results is that it would handicap growth.

Consequently, it’s a terrible idea.

Why do you think that?

If anything bigger buisnesses have more ressources to avoid taxes. - Thus having everyone pay the same would lead to large companies paying more than they do now and small companies would be barely affected.

True. Proposal of parent could be made more realistic by making sure only few things like bill of materials, resale items and personnel costs can be deducted. Companies already keep track of all these things.

You will have to go after financialization tricks, where healthy companies get loaded with debt, weird tricks with assets and all the stuff the finance industry comes up with that has nothing to do with core function of the company. Now imagine the powerful lobby you have to work against.

Yup, gets pretty complicated. Seems like it'd be easier to forget about corporate tax, and charge income tax on every dollar going from the company to an individual.

Apparently some lobby found my little comment too. :)

Food for thought: in a distribution chain you will find lots of small value adds. Take sea ports, there are loads of companies that handle import of materials or products. The price they charge for their goods/services are dominated by their import costs.

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