[chaoxu]

I actually don't get why corporation should pay taxes. When the profit of the company is distributed, or paying the employees, the employees/shareholders will be taxed on that money.

[cjpearson]

Corporate taxes allow governments some level over control over corporate policy by incentivizing certain behaviors through deductions/credits etc. Also, dropping the corporate tax rate to 0 would probably be politically impossible, even an identical amount was then taxed on the individuals who benefit.

[hntrader]

On the other hand, corporate taxes advantage large multi-national corporations over smaller companies because they have the resources and capability to manoeuvre around the rules and pay a lower relative tax rate.

A government should be able to achieve control through Pigovian taxation, regulations and fines. I'm not convinced that a blanket corporate tax (which does indeed facilitate targeted tax breaks) is necessary beyond the other tools that already exist.

[TheCoelacanth]

Corporate taxes should be structured more like usage fees instead of being a tax on profits. Want to emit carbon? It costs $X/ton. You shouldn't get away with doing bad stuff for free just because you did it unprofitably.

[gruez]

>Corporate taxes allow governments some level over control over corporate policy by incentivizing certain behaviors through deductions/credits etc.

Money is fungible. From an accounting perspective $1 given via tax credits is identical to $1 check given by the government. That said, your point is still valid because the former is much more politically palatable than the latter.

[bradleyjg]

What about the benefits that flow to foreign shareholders? You can’t effectively tax their capital gains.

[Erlich_Bachman]

Why not just tax any sale of a stock or a divident payout in the country of the company, - not the country of owner of said stock? These operations have to go through country of company anyway...

[valuearb]

Why should we tax foreigners for investing the in the U.S?

[scatters]

Instead, companies are incentivized to hold cash offshore.

[ocdtrekkie]

Well, one problem is this just encourages companies to collect and never disburse funds to employers or shareholders. Companies in some cases are holding onto hundreds of billions in cash offshore.

Your idea would make that money free to keep out of the economy and out of employee's hands.

[hntrader]

What would be the incentive for this?

The whole point is for stakeholders to eventually get paid in a taxable event; either shareholders through a capital gains taxable event or employees through an income taxable event.

Some tech companies are hoarding cash but I don't believe this is due to incentives created by taxation, although I could be mistaken.

[valuearb]

First of all, that money is never "out of the economy" whether its in a bank-account or a dividend it's circulating in the economy, either here or overseas.

Second, the main reason U.S. companies keep foreign profits offshore is they would be taxed if brought back to the U.S.

Your understanding of the problem is exactly backwards.

[refurb]

Why would a company just sit on funds like that? It makes no sense. Any cash a company has is usually in short term investments.

The current offshore “hoarding” is actually due to the current tax code.

[randomopining]

Corporations benefit from the lawful society, the road system, the public-educated workforce, the clean water, the geopolitical ties of the US, etc...

The government needs to collect money to pay for current and futures investments that created that environment... no? What's the most effective way?

[koshnaranek]

Netflix makes a lot of money in Europe. Most of that profit would move to the US... even more than it currently does.

[imtringued]

From the perspective of the US this is an argument against corporate taxes. There is a global corporate tax race to the bottom and some European countries are taking advantage of that.

[FpUser]

The easy ( yeah right ) fix would be single universal sales tax. You buy something - you pay. Does not matter corporation or person. No expense claims on that either. This will also eliminate need to count assets as the taxes has already been paid on those. Tax can be progressive with the possibility of rate going negative for low income people.

[imtringued]

The easy fix would be to have a land value tax that pays for everything. You can trivially dodge sales taxes by not declaring them. There are legal ways and illegal ways to not declare them.

Meanwhile with land value taxes, you either own the land and you pay, or you don't own the land and you don't pay. The only way you can dodge this is by not owning assets in the US and by not living in the US. Landlords pass the land value taxes onto renters (individuals and companies) who then end up paying their fair share of the US taxes.

[thehappypm]

I used to think this was a good idea but it ends up really, really favoring big corporations.

Startup A wants to get into a market and it buys Zoom licenses, GSuite, AWS servers, etc and pays a hefty tax bill.

Microsoft wants to get into that market? They don't have to buy any of that stuff, they already own everything. No tax dollars, lower cost to the incumbent.

[asdff]

That's if you faithfully operate your corporation. You can set yourself up a corporation and pay yourself from that a very small salary on paper, while enjoying the funds through other means. Trump can't be on the board of any charities in the State of New York anymore after similar misuse of funds with his Trump Foundation nonprofit.

[Black101]

So it would be fine if only corporations would pay taxes? Get rid of all income tax, sales tax, etc...