In today’s world, companies are moving away from fixed assets and becoming much more mobile in both their corporate structure and physical location. As companies outsource more of their activities, it will become increasingly easy for them to move the most valuable parts of their production process to low-tax jurisdictions. As a result, it will be increasingly difficult to tax corporate profits, especially when the concept of profits is becoming more difficult to define. For this reason, governments would be wiser to shift the burden of taxes more toward less mobile sources of revenue (such as consumption and property) and/or activity associated with social harms (such as greenhouse emissions and use of tobacco). The greater visibility of these taxes is actually a benefit for making better policy.
