DIVIDENDS AND TRANSPARENCY? Don’t dividends solve the problem of creating transp

DIVIDENDS AND TRANSPARENCY?

Don’t dividends solve the problem of creating transparent data better than taxation does, because the incentives are aligned? Taxes distort information gathering, distort incentives, and distort the economy. Don’t dividends do the opposite? I’d rather have dividends and no corporate taxation on dividends, and taxation only upon personal income, if I were interested in providing informational transparency without the tragic incentives of corporate taxation.

—“Taxation is not only a way of requiring all citizens to contribute to the financing of public expenditures and projects and to distribute the tax burden as fairly as possible; it is also useful for establishing classifications and promoting knowledge as well as democratic transparency.”—

Piketty, Thomas (2014-03-10). Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Kindle Locations 297-299). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.