Bring in a 0pc Corporation Tax: IBEC

[HanleyS]

Is everyone agreed that this is a rubbish idea then? Blood thirsty capitalists included?

[Pax]

Eliminating profit is a terrible aim. Without profit, there's no investment, no innovation, no efficiency, no employment.

Rubbish. Of course there's all of those without a profit incentive. The lack of a profit incentive does not eliminate them. R&D is a public good which is why it receives public funding. Corporations and profit seekers have less interest in blue-sky research leading to breakthroughs that may or may not come, such as the internet which is thankfully free thanks to it's public inception. Sure, a market can improve efficiency of existing technology but in the main it requires public intervention and subsidisation for success. Indeed it's questionable how much a for-profit market would be more efficient than a non-profit selfmanaged market. Also, open-source software such as Firefox etc can hardly be deemed to have a lack of innovation. But this is all a side track as I mentioned - for another thread.

Such levels seem to go along with a high levels of a social safety net which are in turn funded by high taxes. I have no problem with a system where all personal taxation is progressive, (and speaking in a non-ideal sense) I'd even bite my lip and agree to interventionist policies to improve native business development, which in affect is a subsidy. However I don't think corporations should be allowed to reduce taxation on their profits to nothing. I don't see that as progressive and I think it's most unusual to suggest it is.

Even though you've yet to challenge the point that instead of fatcats paying only 20% on dividends, they'd have to pay the higest rate of income tax instead??

You misrepresent my point again. I'm in favour of high progressive taxation, to Scandinavian levels or higher. The difference here, is you want to lower corporation tax to 0 and then claim the ridiculous assertion that if every nation does this it would be progressive! Therefore your fatcat point is moribund.

Most of your other responses miss the point entirely, such as how you ignore my point about inequality and the increasing the power of corporations within a capitalist system. Or the use of the Soviet strawman when Marx never prescribed anything like the Soviet bloc model. And certainly no the brutal Chinese neoliberal system of today!

In fact I'd like to see a situation where we move towards corporations being taxed globally along with a Tobin tax!

Firstly, taxing corporations globally would effectively rule out any competition between countries on tax policy. A very bad idea. It'd mean that high-tax-and-spend countries lik France would never have to reform. A Tobin tax would curtail the free movement of capital around the world, an equally negative outcome.

It's a pity you don't limit your dislike of capitalism to a private activity instead of trying to wreck what has been created. A moot point of course.

So France wouldn't 'have' to reform? Good then. I think a Tobin tax is just one part of a movement to see democracy at the global level. At a base minimum I'd support democracy over the current global dictatorship of vested interests.