Corporate income tax is evil

We know that because “Don’t be evil” Google pays almost no corporate income tax.   This Bloomberg/Business Week article outlines how they do it.  It involves Dutch, Irish, and Bermudan subsidiaries, and is apparently quite legal.  In addition to playing international transfer-pricing games, of course, corporations can take advantage of various incentives and loopholes built into or discovered in the tax code.

Naturally, I am mentioning this to point out that a land value tax cannot be avoided, as long as land transaction, description, and payment records are public. (And, I might add, as long as there are some reasonably free news media, and some members of the public who pay at least a little bit of attention.) There is never any question as to which jursidiction land is in, and there is no need for incentives to attact land.