"Increasing taxes on companies only can reduce those 4 things." It tends to mostly only do 2. 4 only happens when there's a flutter of hope that there might be

"Increasing taxes on companies only can reduce those 4 things." It tends to mostly only do 2. 4 only happens when there's a flutter of hope that there might be a tax holiday soon. I can only think of one instance of 1 off the top of my head and it was because Henry Ford hated his shareholders. "Taxing companies merely distorts markets" There is so much wrong with this sentence: * The presumption that markets start out 'perfect' and any attempt to change them is morally wrong. * The presumption that taxes somehow aren't intended to change markets (indeed, that's largely their only reason for being). >In each instance there is a person that can be taxed at the end of the chain. So why do it twice? To introduce a targeted deflationary measure at the point where it will do the most good. Outsized profits as % of GDP does real harm to the economy - it shifts disproportionate economic power into fewer hands and it effectively moves resources away from people who earn money by working into the hands of people who simply receive it by dint of their control over resources. >Taxing companies merely distorts markets (witness all the money AAPL & GOOD put thru Ireland If you could make a believable promise that corporation tax is, from this point on, only ever going to go up, all of that money would flood home tomorrow. It's holding out because Apple thinks that it can corrupt our legislators enough to get them to instigate a tax holiday.