I agree, that having companies compete on bringing out the best products or services is different from having countries compete on taxes. Just to clarify, count

I agree, that having companies compete on bringing out the best products or services is different from having countries compete on taxes. Just to clarify, countries do not give big corporates clever ways to avoid paying taxes totally, but do give them ways to pay less taxes in order to make themselves more attractive. There are various reason they do this, but they only do it if they as a location is not attractive compared to other locations. The issue is more complex if you dig deeper and start comparing the US and EU. As a general rule western Europe has lower corporate tax and higher income tax than the USA. If you dig deeper you can also see that certain business cluster do not need to give any tax breaks to attract and keep companies, because they have a thriving business cluster. Think of the wine-growing industry in California and the flower-growing business in the Netherlands. My main issue with centralizing the tax rules is that it will hurt the less attractive regions of Europe.