G20 ministers urge tighter tax rules for multinationals

Over the past 100-125 years or so, most countries have reduced taxes on wealth, property and goods (ie import tariffs, luxury excise taxes etc) and have instead decided to adopt the relatively modern idea of levying taxes on incomes and profits. This experiment has worked over the past century but it looks like the economy has changed so dramatically in recent times that it's no longer viable. People are more mobile than ever and so much of the today's income and profits are generated from intellectual property that can be moved around the globe to a PO Box in the lowest tax jurisdiction.

It seems to me that we have 2 options:

A.) We can abandon this modern economic experiment by abolishing income and profits taxes and instead go back to higher taxes on wealth, property, goods, and consumption. For example, if we charge 30% on the value of iphones being imported into the country, we wouldn't have to worry about chasing Apple to pay corporation tax at the other end of the transaction once that iphone is sold. This could bring alot of economic activity back 'onshore' but more importantly it would incentivise governments to make their cities into beautiful and safe places where human beings actually wanted to live (ie. places like Venice or Stockholm), rather than rewarding the undesirable places that just lower their tax rates to attract wealth (ie. Singapore, Dubai or Florida). This is what used to happen during the renaissance in Italy where cities were in competition to be the most beautiful and desirable places to live and do business in.

Or

B.) we can instead create a global system of blacklists and sanctions (policed by the United States) that will dictate the specific tax rates which each country is allowed to set (even if they are small and don't need the money) and a system where all governments are forced to disclose their citizens' private financial information to the FBI on demand.

I know which option I prefer.

Maybe land tax should be more prominent. There are plenty advocating it. But clearly those who make the rules are part of the most propertied classes so better for them if the current byzantine system of tax collection exists with loopholes and government surveillance to boot. It helps with control too. And the noose is being tightened.

The issue has become controversial in many countries, with multinational firms from Google to Starbucks facing accusations of not contributing appropriately to the economies where they make their money, and multi-billion-dollar merger proposals being partly driven by tax considerations.

I suppose the sales of retail property, the cost of utilities, and paying wages to workers is not enough? The alternative is that the cost of opening these stores and offices is too high, and they are simply not opened, meaning that instead of gaining something in taxes, employment, and economic activity, they get nothing at all. And if merger propositions are being driven by tax considerations, that means taxes are too high, not too low.

We are becoming serfs to the state, and increasingly, the only way to succeed on a large scale is to become a crony of the state. The economic problems we have in the world are not the result of taxes being too low, they are the result of governments spending too much. The more they spend, the less we have to spend, and the less we have to spend, the less we buy, and the less business which make things and provide jobs have to provide those things or jobs.