As a (well-paid) international tax lawyer, my anecdotal evidence is that high taxes absolutely impact business and investment decisions. I too see these quotes

As a (well-paid) international tax lawyer, my anecdotal evidence is that high taxes absolutely impact business and investment decisions. I too see these quotes about tax being an irrelevant item to business decisions. I call bullshit on them, and especially Warren Buffett when he says it. Tax is regulation. Just as you see the entrenched cab industry attempting to cudgel Uber out of the marketplace, so too do entrenched interests use tax law to their advantage or to their competitors' disadvantage. People who say decisions are not affected by tax are saying that decisions are made on factors other than net profit after tax. They are also assuming that all investments are made within a single taxing jurisdiction, so that it is impossible to take your money from a 40% tax jurisdiction and put it to work in a 10% tax jurisdiction. Tax is not the only factor in play for business and investment decisions. There are other factors as well. Government red tape is, in my experience, a greater deterrent to business and investment expansion than tax. A high-tax country with a highly efficient, transparent, and predictable bureaucracy (think Western Europe, with variations of course) will be more attractive than an inefficient, dunderheaded bureaucracy-ridden country with a looser tax policy (think Southern Europe). There are lessons for the United States in all of this. Why does money flee from some places? And how can the United States avoid creating the same factors that make capital flee? Don't get me started on government policies that make brains flee the country. That's an order of magnitude more damaging than watching money go away.