Once you accept taxing corporate profit is a very bad idea the solutions magically appear: tax consumption and things we don't want (pollution, land usage etc.) It's very easy to make consumption tax progressive if you want that (higher rates for luxury goods, refunds up to X amount per month, funding social services with it etc.).
There is no reason to debate what a company based in country at the end of the world should pay or how your neighbors choose to tax their companies. If they do business in your country the revenue is collected by consumption tax. If your country is nice to live in people will move and pay tax there. The incentives are right for the politicians: make your country businesses friendly and a nice place to live and for the companies who move to places which are more business friendly and better to operate in as tax rate isn't an issue anymore - everyone sets their consumption tax rates and everyone who sells there must oblige.
The countries setting their corporate tax to near 0% have the right idea. I hope they won't be bullied of their position.
Many countries apparently nice to live in are doing their best to keep people out.
those purchases are taxed as income
Wouldn't the same argument hold for income tax then?
I mean, I can evade income tax to a certain extent by making my boss buy me a nice car, computer, bicycle etc.
But yeah same is true for income tax, my country has a really high wage income tax at top bracket (close to 50% with health&benefits) that kicks in really fast, but profit income tax caps at 20% because people would just take profits out of the country if it was higher. so a lot of people work around it by invoicing their salary as self owned company pay min wage and take the rest as profit.
The profit out of salary (for most people) is just not big enough to justify an accountant to optimize.
There is a lot to be said about replacing income tax with a pure consumption tax (it is one possible financial model for the universal basic income).
Most systems tax these at a higher rate. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fringe_benefits_tax_(Australia...
It's not about fixing the Bahamas here.
I do agree with your first sentence though, whether this is good or bad depends on the particulars.
"Standing up to multinational corporations and making them pay their fair share (ra! ra!)" is exactly the type of rhetoric our most generic politicians love.
An American equivalent might be some "government out of your hair" initiative to reduce professional liscencing.. or somesuch.
Once you've got something like that on the table, all the cheapest politicians come out of the woodwork.
On a serious not though, I think it's a good idea if (and only if) this names and addresses the problem which this actually intends to fix: company tax.
Companies have always been difficult to tax properly for 2 reasons. (1) "profit" is whatever your accountant says it is, and this is a manipulatable figure. (2) companies operate in multiple tax jurisdictions. Between these two things, these companies don't pay tax. Besides denying the taxman her due, this gives bigger piles of money and advantage over smaller ones. Not fair. Sad.
I just don't see how modern democracies can address something like this. It's at the nexus of all the things we suck at (politically) at the moment. Cheap idealogy, corporate interest groups, and complicated systems.