>The barrier to move HQs and the like is so insanely low for large corporations that companies will gladly do it for even the most marginal tax benefits

So why is so much tech stuck on the west coast then?

If it were that simple they'd have all moved (moved their operations and headcount) to lower tax areas by now.

The location of your Corporate headquarters is different to the physical location of your company.

Payroll and property taxes follow the state of the employees, not the company. Taxes on profit are easy for a BigCo to dodge with good accounting.

It's only easy to dodge them due to the current rules of accounting - we can work on fixing that component or enforcing minimal VAT taxes down-chain. For instance the US could require that a VAT of at least 20% be paid before reaching the US, then collect any taxes left on the table by, say, the bahamas when they only collect a 2% VAT - the US could gate goods entry based on a 18% fee on the difference.

This applies only to actual goods value (and doesn't look at capturing out-of-band transactions like online orders of virtual goods) but it's a really dead simple and easy to enforce law that'd kill a lot of tax dodging dead.

The real issue isn't that it's hard to tax these companies - it's that there isn't a significant political will in taxing these companies.

They’re all incorporated in Delaware not Palo Alto

Haven't they? The whole point here is that where the HQ legally is located really has nothing to do with where the people actually are.

I think what we're arguing about is whether or not this distinction should remain meaningless, since one player in this game clearly does not see it that way.

I think that's one side of the discussion, yes. But I think that it's impossible to force corporate citizenship without either

1. A voluntary international accord (that could be broken by any dissenting voices)

2. A single country setting the rules for corporate residency and enforcing them (i.e. the unilateral we don't need no diplomacy approach).

Instead I think the whole idea of primary residence for corporations is utterly unenforceable - I think what countries need to start doing is levying appropriate VAT taxes on added value to companies and possibly force all domestic activity to be executed by domestic labour only. I think, if we actually fixed the loopholes around international tax dodging, we'd be in a position where countries would be quite aware of how much value they have over a given company (i.e. Apple might derive 60% of their value from the US) and then use that proportionality to leverage political pressure on companies as needed.

And, just to clarify, this is essentially the road the CCP has taken and precisely why they seem to have such an outsized amount of control over companies - every country other than China is voluntarily declining to flex their muscles.

I like this idea a lot. It would force an explicit decision from these companies to formalize their (today implicit) relationships with nation-states.