A wealth tax on corporations’ stock
Saez and Zucman propose a tax on corporations’ stock shares for all publicly listed companies headquartered in G20 countries. Given that the G20 stock market capitalization is around $90 trillion, this tax could raise approximately $180 billion each year by imposing a tax rate of 0.2 percent on the value of each company’s stock. Corporations could pay this tax in-kind, by issuing new stock, so that the tax does not raise liquidity issues or affects business operations. Cooperation among the G20 countries will be required and it will be enforced by the securities commissions in each country. Additional benefits of this tax:
- This tax would be highly progressive: stock ownership is highly concentrated among the rich, in the United States, for example, the top 1% adults with the highest pre-tax income own about 30% of all publicly-traded corporate equities.
- Companies, such as Amazon and Tesla, become enormously valuable once they establish market power and even before they start making significant profits. This corporate wealth tax would make them start paying taxes sooner.
A Wealth Tax on Corporations’ Stock
Authors: Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman
From: University of California Berkeley
The global minimum corporate tax
If implemented fully, a global minimum corporate tax rate would revolutionize international capital taxation. […] With a more level playing field between capital and labor, companies can be induced to develop and adopt new technologies that increase worker productivity, rather than continuing the trend of excessive automation that has shaped the US economy for the past two decades. Part and parcel of this effort will be action to end the dominance of just a few companies in the technology sector.
Biden’s Great Tax Rebalancing
By: Daron Acemoglu – MIT
The destination-based cash flow tax
Alan Auerbach is suggesting to tax multinationals with a destination-based cash flow tax i.e. taxing corporations based on the location of their sales.
Among other things, this would provide immediate expensing for all investment, eliminate the tax advantage for corporate borrowing, and impose border tax adjustments to eliminate taxes on export revenues and tax deductions for import costs. At the end of the day, only domestic cash flows would be taxed. And, because transactions between domestic companies and related foreign parties would have no US tax consequences, the practice of profit shifting would disappear.
A Commonsense Corporate Tax
By: Alan J. Auerbach – University of California, Berkeley
