When was the last time you were able to lobby congress to write laws to your liking, or create trade agreements, or author a bill to advantage your financial interests?
I'm suggesting that you bypass the problem by eliminating corporate taxes, and replacing them with taxes on investors, who individually would not have the leverage to avoid them. As an added bonus, you'd deprive politicians of a powerful tool that they are demonstrably incapable of wielding fairly and effectively.
The problem doesn't go away— there are a hundred and one ways that companies can receive favours from the government other than tax breaks: land giveaways, pollution exemptions, utility discounts, trade/tariff deals, infrastructure like highways/rail/fibre being routed in such a way that benefits their locations or supply chains, etc etc.
If your government officials are corrupt or untrustworthy, that's a problem to deal with at the source, not by trying to tie their hands by taking away some of the tools they use to set policy.
- Foreign workers will be even more competitive than they are today relative to domestic (because they won't have to be compensated for the additional income tax burden).
- Capital expenditures, automation, etc will all be more competitive vs. hiring workers.
- Companies look for even more non-worker ways to spend cash, such as increasing their political power via lobbying.
Maybe none of this is bad long term, or it all comes out in the wash eventually, but trying to sell this in the short term sounds like political suicide to me— I don't think the purported benefits of 0% tax on corps is even remotely worth it. Corporations benefit from government services; they can pay taxes directly on the value they generate.
It costs money to run the government -- the court system, the armed forces, the legislatures, the police and fire departments, etc. Companies consume these resources and that cost should be factored into the cost of their products. In fact, it seems pretty obvious to me that especially large corporations use these resources far more than individuals. When was the last time you were able to lobby congress to write laws to your liking, or create trade agreements, or author a bill to advantage your financial interests?
Back in the 50s in the US, companies paid about 30-35% of total tax revenue and the gears of industry still turned fine. Now it is about 7%, and people complain that it is too much and is harming the economy and stifling progress.
If companies were taxed at a higher rate, yes, it would change things. There would be winners and losers, but a new equilibrium would be established soon enough. Dividends would be lower -- yes, so what? The economy is already too geared towards rewarding unproductive stock market games and the lopsided part of that goes to the people who are already well off. Dropping taxes to zero for companies would make things worse. Rich people wouldn't consume more and would just reinvest their increased dividends, while working people would have to make up the loss of tax revenues either through increased personal tax or loss of services.