In my opinion taxes on big corporations should be adjusted by how much damage they do to infrastructure. Infrastructure they use to make money like roads and utilities. If a large factory opens up in a rural part of the city where there are no hookups to water or sewer or roads the government will build it for them. The government will extend the utility mains and pave new road just to accommodate them. It is always written off because they will add more jobs to the area( looks good for politicians). If a large shipyard gets built the government will dredge the channels for the large container/tanker ships or a cruise ship dock. Trucks and commercial shipping are the leading cause of road erosion. The government builds countless weigh stations to help prevent even more damage to the infrastructure.
All paid for by tax dollars from citizens and small businesses for what? So the largest users can make more money and not give a dam about the rest of the infrastructure that really needed repairs. The next time you hit a pothole look around at all the 18 wheelers with private company names that do 90% of the damage and pay the same generic tax for utilities.
The only effective way to tax large corporations properly would be with a dynamic tax based on many different criteria. This sounds like I am for regulations and I am, but only if they were written correctly. The current regulations are to broad and written by lobbyists that favor large companies and squeeze out new competition.
The best analogy I can use to describe what happens is a Chinese buffet.
Its all you can eat for everyone at the same fairly expensive price for the fast food they serve. In the end it equalizes the different customers, but it really isn't dynamic enough to fairly solve the underlying problem. That is most people eat a reasonable amount of food, but the pigs who eat mountains and mountains of food, plate after plate put a hurting on the restaurant. You can say they are the leading cause of food erosion & therefore cause the restaurant to hire more cooks and order more food.(maintaining infrastructure) All of this increases the cost of operating the restaurant. In order to maintain the higher volume & operational cost the restaurant raise it price. (tax) But this is raised for everyone to accommodate the few pigs that abuse and use most of the resources.
An efficient regulation could solve the problem if it was dynamic. A good system that exactly measures magnitude would calculate your personal price (tax). I know it sounds wired applying it to a buffet but it won't change the fact it is all you can eat. There would still be no limit on food but you would just pay more the more you eat. At first people who abused the system would be upset because they have to pay more but what do they have to argue with. You ate more it cost more.
What it will do is stop abuse and if it upsets the few pigs, who cares. Remember they are only a few and if they never came back im sure the restaurant would not lose sleep. you know why, because the majority of reasonable diners would be ecstatic at the lower price making it more appealing to the majority and theoretically increasing clients. The restaurant would hire more cooks and order more food to serve the higher volume of customers, but they will not have to raise cost (tax) because of much greater gross margin of operation.
So what dose this mean? The restaurant can keep within its operational budget while serving more customers (small businesses). This in no way restricts the pigs (fat cats) from dining at the restaurant it just adds a dynamic scale that fairly equalizes usage.
A real life example could be having all commercial trucking record the mileage of their trucks and pay a flat fee based on magnitude alone. No percentage rates something simple like $.001 for every mile a truck travels during shipping. This way a smaller company will not have to pay a generic percentage of profit just because they are in the trucking industry. This will actually tax based on actual usage and not a percentages of overall profits. This is just one out of the countless criteria and it would take a while to needle down every aspect that goes on in every sector of industry
We really need to rethink how to implement taxes. Percentages should be a thing of the past in our modern world where actual quantities are so easily measured. Compared to the current tax bracket percentages, the dynamic tax system is simpler and more specific to each business as a separate entity.