I mean, it seems pretty obvious that cutting corporate taxes in a good economy is a dumb idea. Where are they going to put those savings, other than juicing up their share values on Wall Street?
Research and development?
In case anybody thinks I might be contradicting myself given my previous comments (if anybody cares) I was previously commenting only on the impact that cutting/raising corporate income taxes has on the corporate decision of where to locate and arguing that it does not make a big difference, at least not in the short term.
For what it's worth, I have never really liked corporate income taxes as they can both lead corporations to cut discretionary spending (like research and development) and/or they can be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices/less production.
That said, the stupidest tax on corporations is clearly the employer part of the payroll tax as that is literally a tax on jobs.
They primarily get passed onto employees in the form of lower wages, except for special cases where the primary consumers are stuck with few options or where it is very hard to buy and sell shares in a company. In general, it's much easier to sell stock than to find a different job and it's also easier to buy from a different store/supplier. Unless the company is a (near) monopoly, the employees will be the ones who "pay" most of the corporate tax in lower wages because it's hardest for them to change their behavior in response. If the company is a monopoly or has a very strong brand, consumers will "pay" most of the corporate tax in the form of higher prices. At least with a publicly traded company in a developed country, it's trivially easy to invest or divest. This means shareholders will pay virtually none of the tax.
