Corporate tax considered

Of course, if the "small government at any cost" crowd at the IPA (and ideological anti-taxers like David Leyonhjelm) think that corporate tax per se is a bad idea,  it's a safe assumption that it's actually a good idea.   But seeing they are being given a bit of media space to run their arguments, I've been looking for some pro-corporate tax articles on the net, and here is what I've found so far:

*  10 Reasons we Should Tax Corporations

*  Why corporate taxes are good for you

*  Why we need the corporate tax income tax

The IPAers end their article as follows:

But even if the government wishes to keep the corporate tax fiscal illusion going, there's hope. For all the handwringing about the double Irish Dutch sandwich, one point often missed is that Ireland has been very clever. That country's low corporate tax rates have brought in multinationals, and with them jobs and investment.

It's not obvious those low rates have come at a cost to the Irish budget. Corporate tax revenue as a percentage of total revenue in Ireland is almost exactly the OECD average. There's no reason we couldn't copy the Irish example – get in on the Irish-Dutch sandwich ourselves. The Irish make their own luck. So should we.

 Of course, some countries can do well out of the race to the bottom, by being first to get there.  And they win at a real, impoverishing, cost to other nations who recover diminishing revenue from economic activity in their country.

But people with a moral sense above that of Scrooge McDuck  can see that you can't expect all countries to succeed in this race.   There's only so many multinationals minimising tax to go around...