It's very hard to reason about this stuff from first principles... everything means something complex in the complex. If you want to strike nearer the trunk, n

It's very hard to reason about this stuff from first principles... everything means something complex in the complex. If you want to strike nearer the trunk, nevermind root, of the issue... the place to start is corporation law. Once a cascade of tax entities of different types/jurisdictions can own or control each other in cascades... it becomes impossible to tax anything in a simple way. Without that, it's impossible for corporate tax just apply to the individuals with a share. If it was, than we could (as you suggest) think of corporate income tax as a +/- to regular income tax. As it stands, it is a different sum and applies to different people/ tax entities. In terms of economic efficiency.... I don't think any abstract economic theory beats current reality observations. If you look at some of the biggest current companies... they are obviously undertaxed. A company like google doesn't accumulate 10s of $bns cash unless they cannot find ways of putting it to work. In theory, no matter what their tax burden, they would have "produced^" and invested what they did anyway. The same is not (necessarily) true fro TSLA or JNJ. It probably is for FB or MSFT. In any case... as "mainstream" macroeconomics rapidly turns in a loose money direction, "bring the money home, we don't have enough money here" is less of a thing. The federal reserve is making however much money they think the economy needs for monetary purposes anyway... ^Scare quotes because "production" measured in ad sales is a little abstract for me.