by From Dean Baker While Elizabeth Warren is praising the European Union’s crackdown on Apple’s Ireland tax scheme, Jack Lew and the Obama Treasury Department are going to bat for corporate tax cheating. Warren is far too optimistic about the prospect of a successful crackdown. These folks are prepared to spend a lot of money to hide their profits from tax authorities and they are likely to find accomplices in many Irelands around the world. It would be good to look in a different direction. I remain a big fan of my proposal for companies to turn over non-voting shares of stock to the government. In that case, what goes to the shareholders also goes to the government. Unless you cheat your shareholders, you can’t cheat the government. I know this is probably too simple to be taken seriously in policy circles, but those who care about an efficient and effective way to collect corporate taxes should be thinking about it.
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from Dean Baker
While Elizabeth Warren is praising the European Union’s crackdown on Apple’s Ireland tax scheme, Jack Lew and the Obama Treasury Department are going to bat for corporate tax cheating. Warren is far too optimistic about the prospect of a successful crackdown. These folks are prepared to spend a lot of money to hide their profits from tax authorities and they are likely to find accomplices in many Irelands around the world.
It would be good to look in a different direction. I remain a big fan of my proposal for companies to turn over non-voting shares of stock to the government. In that case, what goes to the shareholders also goes to the government. Unless you cheat your shareholders, you can’t cheat the government.
I know this is probably too simple to be taken seriously in policy circles, but those who care about an efficient and effective way to collect corporate taxes should be thinking about it.