alt Hacker News> Now the government wants to tax them on the company value?
I’m genuinely baffled at the incredulous tone here. Yes, that is exactly what should happen: laws, subsidies, and incentives enable a company to grow and flourish. Then, as the company grows, other laws incentivize it to give some of its state-sponsored affluence back to benefit the country.
Like, sure, the execution of that process is often dysfunctional, but the fundamental contract there does not seem like it should be surprising to people: we don’t have (many) socialist state-owned businesses, but the point of a functioning country is still to provide good things to the people living in it. Not to benefit businesses or a tiny sliver of the population.
That’s why we have everything from income taxes to interstate highways: to distribute wealth and resources to (a flawed approximation of, but it’s still the goal) everyone in the country. That’s just how non-corrupt governments are supposed to work!
> give some of its state-sponsored affluence back
Then why not tax the military? They are surely the most affluent company of them all, if you take a tally of all their inventory.
If you tax companies based on their size rather than their profits, then you're not going to have any big companies. Any investor or entrepreneur would be a fool to invest in making a big company.
But many endeavours need big companies and big investments. For example power plants. That's a whole lot of value to tax, such affluence! Better redistribute this wealth, and instead have a hundred thousand non-affluent hot dog stands.
> That’s just how non-corrupt governments are supposed to work!
In practice, every government in the world does not tax companies reinvesting their profit into growth.