Arguments against Tax Competition
February 12, 2025
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Governments all over the world generally levy graduated taxes on their population. This means that as the income being taxed increases, the tax rate also increases. Under a graduated tax structure, some amount of income is exempted from the tax. Then, there is a different tax slab, which becomes applicable as soon as the income increases. This progressive structure is supposed to help the government earn more money from corporations that earn more.
There are many governments that are now choosing to break away from this pattern. These governments do not levy taxes, where there are multiple tax rates for different incomes. Instead, these governments levy taxes based on a single rate. This is why the system is called a flat tax system. Flat tax systems have become very popular, particularly in countries that were earlier communist.
There are several benefits of having a flat corporate tax system. Some of these benefits have been listed below:
The bottom line is that flat-rate tax systems have empirically shown some advantage over graduated tax systems. However, these advantages are from an economic point of view. The political class stands to lose if flat-rate tax systems are implemented all over the world. This is the reason that they are not very eager to implement the same.
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