The current debate over corporate inversions, in which American companies like Burger King consider renouncing their citizenship for tax-reduction purposes, is only the latest reminder that the United States corporate tax code has deep problems.

Ideas for reforming the business side of the tax code abound, but there are those on both the left and the right who argue that it cannot be salvaged and should simply be abolished. N. Gregory Mankiw made the argument from the right on Sunday in The Times.

The basic idea behind abolition is that the current corporate tax code is fraught with wasteful loopholes — each of which has politically power defenders — that both lose revenue and distort business decisions. The abolitionists ask: Why not give up on the fiction that we can adequately and efficiently tax companies and instead tax their shareholders at higher income-tax rates?

But as imperfect as the corporate tax may be, the end of it would create all kinds of problems and disadvantages. Here is a breakdown of those drawbacks:

The corporate tax is an important balancing mechanism in an era of great inequality. According to the Congressional Budget Office, about 80 percent of corporate income is held by households in the top fifth of the income scale, and about 50 percent is held by the top 1 percent. Unless we could replace it with higher taxes on those same households — a daunting proposition, as I’ll show in a moment — scrapping or even just lowering the corporate tax rate would increase after-tax income inequality.