That’s what the European Commission says is the correct thing to do.

The European Commission said the EU should proceed with an overhaul of taxes on digital firms even if the rest of the rich world did not follow suit, a draft report said.

And to the point:

The document is part of an EU push to tap more revenues from online multinationals such as Amazon and Facebook, who are accused of paying too little tax in Europe by routing most of their profits to low-rate countries such as Ireland or Luxembourg.

The right answer couldn’t possibly be that the high-tax members of the EU should lower theirs in competition with Ireland or Luxembourg.  Mm, mm.  Gotta destroy the competition—at the expense of the citizenry, yet.

And collect more money from those pesky businesses, too.  After all, it’s not like the money belongs to those businesses.  No, Sir: the money is the EU’s, and those bureaucrats will determine what is a sufficiency for the businesses (and the citizenry) to use for themselves.

Business CEOs want tax reform.  They’re right, even though to an extent their wish is self-serving.  Or because of that—Adam Smith’s invisible hand, and all that, where every economic actor seeing to his own self interest aggregates to the benefit of all the actors, including those not party to a particular arrangement among particular actors.

Which brings me to a (not very) tangential point regarding a remark by Business Roundtable President & CEO Joshua Bolten regarding target tax rates:

15% would be terrific….  But it doesn’t have to end up at 15% for Business Roundtable companies to be happy about it.

To which Suzanne O’Halloran, the Reuters author of the piece at the link added

It just needs to get done.

The point is this: it doesn’t have to “get done;” tax reform legislation doesn’t have to get to 15% (or my 0%) in one fell swoop.  Reduce the rates significantly today, taking what’s actually politically possible given the timidity of so many of our politicians and how deeply so many are in with special interests wanting this or that subsidy or credit or loophole.  Come back tomorrow and get more.  And the next day, until the goal is reached.

No piece of tax legislation need be taken as the final word; it’s all interim compromise that moves the ball toward the goal.

This principle applies to health care reform and to health care coverage plan reform, too, as it does to all legislation, but especially legislation that seeks to implement large changes or to modify large sectors of our economy.

New York City is offering almost $10 million in tax breaks to get Aetna Inc to move from Connecticut to Manhattan, and this is in addition to $24 million the state is offering.

It’s a good deal, for Aetna, but it’s not a good deal for the people of New York City, or for the citizens of New York State or for the citizens of the United States.  The reason is hinted at by Anthony Hogrebe, Senior Vice President of Public Affairs for the New York City Economic Development Corporation:

It’s actually the kind of investment that we want to make in the larger healthcare and life sciences ecosystem[.]

It’s about government picking winners.  It’s also about using the tax code to influence business decisions and otherwise to execute social engineering.

Hogrebe actually has illustrated the crying need we have for serious tax reform, which must include eliminating loopholes, subsidies, credits, whathaveyou in our tax code as well as moving to a low, flat income tax for individual citizens and a similarly low, flat tax (if not eliminating it altogether) for corporations.

One beneficial outcome of such reform is that businesses, including Aetna, could locate or relocate to this or that locale based on the business usefulness of being there rather than on how much money taxpayers could be dragooned into paying the business for locating there.

Imagine that: businesses making actual business decisions, rather than decisions that Government wants them to make.