[gopher1]

It's bad because it's unfair.

If everyone, including small businesses, got to pay 0% tax, then you might have a good argument. But as it stands, we have a 35% corporate tax rate for everyone except large multi-national companies who have the means to take advantage of the loopholes. Regular Joe Business does not have those means.

And of course, these same large companies are spending millions lobbying the government to not reform the code.

[tzs]

Apple's income taxes in the US were $13.1 billion on $50.2 billion in earnings, for an effective income tax rate of 26.2% [1].

I don't know why so many people think Apple pays little or no tax. They are in fact the 3rd largest income tax payer in the US.

[1] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/companies-paying-most-taxes-17...

[liber8]

This doesn't take away from your point, but from a practical perspective, small businesses pay 0% corporate tax. When you have just a few shareholders, as nearly all small businesses do, all profits get paid out as salary. If small businesses didn't do this, their owners would be taxed twice (first at the corporate level and then again individually).

The companies that get squeezed are not the Regular Joe Businesses but the midsize businesses that can't get away with paying out all profits as salary (because they have third party shareholders who don't work for the business) and yet can't afford to set up the necessary bureaucracy to take advantage of things like a Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich.