> turns out that when you have 0% corporate tax you lose the ability to incentivize corps via taxes. there are externalities e.g. pollution that one can no longer incentivize via taxation.

Well, you can't incentivize via tax deductions or credits against the corporate income tax if it doesn't exist, but you can absolutely drive corporate incentives via other taxes. E.g., particularly with regard to pollution, fuel/carbon/emissions taxes, rather than corporate income taxes.

Taxing pollution has nothing to do with income taxes. Taxing pollution is "internalizing the externalities", not "they made some money let's take a slice."

it does in the sense that if corporations pay 0% income taxes then there is no money that can be offset from e.g. pollution tax breaks. think about how the mortgage deduction influences homebuying behavior for private individuals.

Well, if you're charged roughly X per kwH for energy, and Y for each # of waste your company produces, this encourages cutting those costs beyond the costs of those parts alone. This would have a more direct effect than simple income tax incentives and be more direct.

There's still an incentive, it's just it's not tethered to income which has MANY ways to work around in other ways with the current structure and the companies wind up not reducing pollution and waste.

You can still incent corporations via taxes. You just don't have an additional "no reason" tax.

Tax the rich directly, via their incomes.

The pollution issue can be solved by simply regulating polluting businesses or just banning them.

Taxing pollution is a much more economically efficient approach than regulation or banning.

You can't really bad pollution anyway. You and I exhale CO2, a greenhouse gas.

Tax/Legislate the issues directly.