Blaming is of limited use. What we need is a solution to make things better. Something like a global tax office to deal with global companies might do it.

"Global tax office"

You would quite literally see revolt / insurrection in the western world, especially America and other former anglo colonies, at the idea of a One World Tax Authority, which would rightfully be seen as a part of one world government, the so-called New World Order that conservatives have maintain DEFCON1 fear of for decades.

Even if it did exist, if if you had a global tax authority with the weight of a global government to enforce it... that doesn't necessarily solve the problem.

There are plenty of tax havens in American states despite a national legislature that could squash them.

On big reason Americans were unrepresented in the Panama Papers leak is that Americans used on-shored havens. They had far less need of an offshore haven when current corporate tax rules allow you to incorporate and tax dodge in Delaware or another friendly state without leaving the country.

If the US can't or won't control domestic tax havens, I'm not so sure a global government would have better luck.

Plus, one world tax authority means one single target for corruption. The Googles of the world, with literal billions to spend, they'd hyper-focus on corrupting that authority to their desires.

I see your objections. My idea is you could base it in the US possibly or have more than one and have them just work out the global earnings using GAAP and apportion it to the various countries by how much they sell there so you get a earnings figure for each country. The countries could then use that to come up with a tax demand at their chosen rate and the company could either pay up or face sanctions in that country. So it doesn't require anything like a world government, just some accounting and possibly trade agreements.

Seems like a grand solution when we're failing even the lesser and more obvious solution: Don't allow them to ship earnings into havens.

Saying we can tax them globally is like saying we can tax them domestically. We fail on the latter, so i can't imagine we'd succeed on the former.

And while i do agree that blame alone is of little use, blame is often the precursor to action. You have to decide who is at fault and or what to focus fixes on, via blame, before you can actually fix them imo. When i see blame discussions like the above, i just assume (perhaps foolishly) that it's the discussion prior to the fixing stage.

Not that the above discussion will fix anything, of course.. but if we can't decide on what is to blame, how can we decide what is to be fixed?

The trouble with don't allow them to ship earnings to tax havens is saying what a tax haven is. There are plenty of regular countries with low taxes such as Ireland or tax breaks such as the UK for movies or the US for various things.

I don't like that how tax evasion is called "rational" here. They're merely performing their prescribed role within a system, without regard for consequences. If a company were to look at the situation rationally, they might very well conclude that paying taxes is rational because taxes pay for the infrastructure that enables their business.

> Shouldn't blame the companies for lobbying and creating the tax laws either -- they're just acting rationally!

spot on. this.

Which means, and this is a big one, you're going to have to deal with the people who sell influence for favours?

But that is the political class, and they are the ones driving the train for companies to pay more tax. Which doesn't make any sense if all that is truly required is for them to fix their own laws and unethical behaviours. Right?