Joe Stiglitz On Globalization And Tax Avoidance

The Guardian provides Joe Stiglitz with a platform to inform the public about the ways in which multinational corporations have effectively lobbied to create corporate tax policies which enable them to take advantage of tax havens.  He discusses some of the ways in which nation states can end the race to the bottom that has been going on for many years.  As a last resort, nation states can deny market access to corporations that continue to use tax havens to avoid paying their share of taxes to governments which provide them with the means to be successful in the global marketplace.  Apple and Google, for example, are totally dependent upon the Internet which was created by government.  Their intellectual property rights are also defended by government and they abuse that privilege by transferring those rights to tax havens so that they can avoid taxes.  The government is an important partner to our multinational corporations, but they have let their partners get away without paying for the support that they provide.  They will continue to do so unless the public does what it is supposed to do in a democracy.  Their ought to be an international protest movement in which citizens refuse to pay taxes until corporations pay their fair share.  In the US every citizen can file for a tax extension.  If millions of citizens file extensions to protest corporate tax policy the government might get the message.  Things like this may be the only way to combat the influence of lobbyists who fund our political campaigns.