[ng12]

Maybe it would be simpler to just impose a nominal tax on the total number of job openings a company creates throughout the year. Maybe as a % of the role's salary. You could even rebate it against employer payroll taxes so they get the money back when they actually hire someone.

[smt88]

You should never tax things you want people to do, like posting legitimate job openings

[sokoloff]

We tax things we want people to do all the time.

We want people to buy things, yet we have sales taxes.

We want people to work productive jobs and earn money, yet we have income taxes.

[xp84]

> posting legitimate job openings

You want to incentivize them FILLING job openings. Nobody cares how many jobs are posted. And posting 100 openings and filling 50 is the stated problem trying to be solved here.

The rebating idea resolves this quite neatly though. Make posting a job opening that eventually gets filled free after rebate[1], and posting a "dangling" job opening that never fills incurs tax.

Now, I can think of a dozen loopholes to get out of this[2], but it's not that it's going to disincentivize hiring.

[1] or maybe even better than free (puts a little tax incentive for hiring and keeping people beyond the typical probationary period).

[2] Can job listings be revised? Just recycle the ghost job listing in bulk before the deadline and convert it to a totally different position (Software Engineer -> Cashier) Can they not be revised? That seems like overreaching ridiculous Soviet red tape.

[platevoltage]

Instead of taxing good behavior, we could just criminalize bad behavior. Besides, companies spend billions on advertising. In a weird indirect way, "ghost jobs" are advertising.

[jiggawatts]

A simple tweak here is that the tax refund can be larger than the deposit.

If you post a fake job and hire a H1B, you get automatically and inescapably slugged with a huge tax.

If you post a real job and hire someone, you get a tax refund.