Maya Forstater

Interesting paper here. Visibility of sales taxes make them popular. Might help us understand why destination-based corporate income tax ideas (#DBCFT) have found popular support recently. Citizens can relate to and like the idea of companies paying taxes where their sales are.https://twitter.com/MattGrossmann/status/1069420147012771841 …

A personal “A-ha!” moment story on this: It was during the #ParadisePapers. Media stories ran in Denmark about Nike’s corporate structure. Journalists (I think @SorenK_DR) went out to the Nike stores and asked shoppers about their views on the tax structuring.

Shopper after shopper, and other passers-by that were interviewed, said they thought Nike should pay (corporate) tax in Denmark on those local sales.

They weren’t fed that policy opinion by anyone. They volunteered it. Without any specific expertise in tax policy. They just had an intuition that taxes should be paid where sales are (as the paper tells us).

To wrap this up: I was honestly taken aback by the consistency. Couldn’t understand how these people could all support such a specific tax policy principle. I’ve even wondered out loud about this: https://twitter.com/phdskat/status/928017245376274432?s=21 … The paper at the top of this thread helps us make sense.

But is it the right question? I mean asking a shopper in Nike store 'should Nike pay tax here' .... is basically should shops pay tax....so answer is 'of course shops should pay tax, all shops pay tax so why shouldn't Nike'?

Is what the right question? I never said what the journalist had asked... I can’t recall precisely the exchanges. Would have to go find the tape. But my recollection is exactly that they were not ‘fed’ the sales tax idea - which is why I was surprised at the consistency.

Broader point of course is that someone else (the paper linked at the top) in fact did do a specific study on people’s attitudes to sales-based taxes