Deric Cheng

And that this is just frankly a fundamental problem that has arisen as a result of our changing economic conditions due to technology, right?

Like 20 years ago, all corporations that deliver products also operated within a country, right?

Like if you sold products, you had a base in that country to sell the products from.

And as a result, you could tax that base.

These days, digital corporations, they can deliver ads in Belgium, but not have a

not have a base in Belgium.

And so as a result, there must be some way for Belgium to capture the profits being created by their citizens spending money.

And so that's essentially what OECD BEPS is designed to respond to, which is that kind of inequality and the existing gaps in the global taxation mechanisms for corporations.

Yeah, I think land taxation would be much more resilient as wealthy people are very unwilling to shift their land consumption elsewhere.

Certainly they are, but it's much more difficult.

And then similarly, consumption taxes are quite resilient to this sort of international tax haven, tax loophole type work in that where you consume goods tends to be relatively stable in many industries, not all industries, but many industries.

Yeah, yeah, they have benefits when it comes to economic efficiency from almost like a macro perspective and certainly from a theoretical perspective.

I think maybe one of the arguments against that is simply that despite being relatively less efficient,

we do see significant non-zero amounts of corporate taxation and income taxation.

And for many reasons that it is efficient for societies to have some level of corporate taxation, right?

It allows for certain levels of stability or capture of the activities of large corporations.

And I think most economists would not advocate in favor of nothing.

when it comes to, say, corporate or capital taxation, even though it is less efficient.

And so it really just becomes a balancing of the trade-offs, right?

If you see, say, 100x increase in the capital gains from capital investment or corporate profits,