Left-Libertarians and the Corporate Income Tax

On this thread on Kevin Carson’s mutualist blog, I had written: “BTW I assume you would be for removing all corporate income tax, since it is based on the entity fiction? This is yet another way the state *harms* corporations”. One P.M. Lawrence replied that this comment “is disingenuous; by itself, it would make things worse – by itself. Over and over, we have pointed out that selectively removing some burdens while leaving others can make things worse, even if all burdens should be removed. It’s like scraping barnacles off one side of a ship; not only would the ship not speed up much, the side that still had barnacles would start going back, and because the ship would go in circles it would make less headway overall.”

Got it. I suppose if I hated corporates and shareholders, I would not mind seeing the state punish them either.Kevin Carson is upset with me about this post. He thinks my title is misleading–though I link to his post so people can see for themselves. And because comments are not enabled on LRC. Well. And because there is no proof that Lawrence is a left-libertarian. Well, I did assume Lawrence was a left-lib, given his pro-Carson arguments on a left-libertarian blog. But if he’s not, then my criticism is directed only at Sir Lawrence. We await his self-clarification with bated breath.

As for Carson himself, n.b. that he writes: “Suffice it to say that any enemy of big business should have, among his top priorities, the abolition of the corporate income tax–or at the very least, closing all tax loopholes and then lowering the tax rate to revenue-neutral levels.”

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9:49 am on December 13, 2008