The tax avoidance game is an enormous waste of resources and energy. We would like to see Pfizer focused on developing better drugs, not figuring out how to lessen its tax liability. The corporate sector as a whole devotes an enormous amount of money and brainpower to tax gaming, which contributes zero to the economy. Many of the financial wizards designing these schemes get very rich in the process, making tax gaming a factor in income inequality.

For these reasons we should be looking for better ways to extract a share of corporate profit for public uses. Fortunately, there is an old idea that could do the job.

Suppose that, instead of taxing corporate profits, we required companies to turn over an amount of stock, in the form of nonvoting shares, to the government. We can fight over the percentage later (we’d want to match what we ideally get from corporate income taxes now, so presumably between 17 and 35 percent). But first we can focus on the principle.

The shares would be nontransferable, except in the case of mergers or buyouts, but they otherwise would be treated just like any other shares. If the company paid a dividend to its other stockholders, then it would pay the same per share dividend to the government. If it bought back 10 percent of its shares, then it would buy back 10 percent of the government’s shares at the same price. In the event of a takeover, the buyer would have to pay the same per-share price to the government as it did to the holders of other shares.

This way, there is no way for a corporation to escape its liability. A portion of whatever profit it makes will automatically go to the government. It also eliminates the enormous cost and waste associated with complying with or avoiding the corporate income tax (there would be some start-up and monitoring costs, of course, but nothing like what current enforcement requires). And federal revenues will go up, because companies will have incentive to do what is most profitable, not what minimizes their tax liability.