托福阅读时事：如何革国际公司税制？.docVIP

托福阅读时事：如何改革国际公司税制？ 小马过河为大家准备了“托福阅读时事：如何改革国际公司税制？”， 供各位备考托福的考生们参考使用，来提高自己的托福成绩！免费咨询电话：400-0123-267 　　The first time my research gained wide publicity was in 1979. In collaboration with another young academic, I explained that many large British companies paid no corporation tax. The issue resurfaces again as my co-author retires from the Bank of England. 　　This week’s Group of Eight meeting produced denunciations of secrecy and tax havens. But the sources of the problem are not to be found in Bermuda or the Channel Islands. The activities that escape taxation take place in the G8. The correct starting point is the flawed structure and implementation of corporation tax in the G8 itself. 　　Corporation tax is a levy on the profit a company earns for its shareholders. It is therefore both a tax on corporate activity and on shareholders, and it is not well designed to achieve either purpose. It is not robust administratively or economically. Complex and vulnerable to avoidance, it produces major distortions of both investment and financial decisions of companies. 　　It makes sense to tax the incomes of shareholders. If it is desirable to tax separately the activities of companies, the most appropriate base is free cash flow, or economic rent – the amount a business earns in excess of its cost of capital. Almost every dispassionate examination of the structure of company taxation has favoured reform on these lines. Sir Mervyn King and I advocated it in 1979; the Mirrlees Review of the UK tax structure recently undertaken by the Institute for Fiscal Studies reached the same conclusion. 　　There are several different ways of moving towards this result – removing interest deductibility, introducing an allowance for the cost of corporate equity or shifting the tax base towards cash flow rather than accounting profit – but all end up in broadly the same place. 　　These reforms attempt to treat different levels of investment and different methods of financing in the same way. Oppo