Eliminating corporate taxes ranked fairly well when Planet Money asked economists for policy proposals.[0] (All the proposals were things that have fairly broad

Eliminating corporate taxes ranked fairly well when Planet Money asked economists for policy proposals.[0] (All the proposals were things that have fairly broad agreement by left and right wing economists but are deeply unpopular to most people, like eliminating the mortgage interest deduction.) It wouldn't have been something I even considered before that episode, but one economist argued that people really find corporate taxes appealing because they're suspicious of concentrated wealth. But if we're trying to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor, we could just transfer wealth from the rich to the poor through more progressive income taxes. While I think they made a good prima facie case, there's one counterargument that I haven't seen explored. Cheating is positively correlated with tax rates. So if you have a variety of kinds of taxes, you can have lower rates than if you just have one source of revenue. You can reduce the incentive to cheat while collecting the same revenue. The "sweetheart deals" mentioned here are definitely aggravating though, they seem deeply unfair, and zero sum when states compete for the business.[2] I'd like more countries and states to adopt a "most favored company" rule, where any company can claim the same terms as the most favored company in that territory. Similar to how the WTO ensures fairness. If a state wants to eliminate corporate taxes, fine, whatever, but you can't just do it for one company whose execs took you out to a few ball games. [0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/10/18/163106924/a-tax-plan-that-economists-love-and-politicians-hate http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/10/18/163106924/a-tax... [1] Planet Money had another episode on that a few years back, on the state level.