Maya Forstater

I intepreted your tweet, Alex, as an example of 2) - sorry if I misread it. By denying or ignoring the existing evidence, one might lose those who - like me - share the goal of fair taxation, but believe the evidence.

1) we share the same goal b) @alexcobham reigned back on its original statement, moving from "unimportant" to "tax is secondary to a range of real economic factors". I am happy that his first comment is probably hard to justify, but I am a lot more confident re: the second one

The WB data shows that a number of factors are important for investment in dev countries (may get very different results for developed countries). Low Tax rate is one factor, but the narrative that I/you would like to change is that this is the key factor to attract investment

Here's another of those unstated assumptions though: that additional, tax-motivated FDI will have any offsetting benefits for people in the host country. Evidence shaky to say the least

I agree. Even if the total average effect is positive, there may losers (that's why there is a strongly investor averse political climate in e.g. our capital Berlin - the median voter would probably lose via higher rents etc.).

I think example of some (many?) poorer countries shows that tax breaks/incentives do not always bring permanent benefits, or even temporary ones. Not sure if I've seen comparable evidence for richer countries, other than loss of tax revenues and inferred negatives. @MForstater

I've always found the arguments "there is a vicious race to the bottom on effective corporate tax rates" driven by competition to attract FDI and "internationally mobile investment does not respond to changes in effective tax rate" impossible to reconcile....