Actually, we don't have to agree t disagree on this one: I've handled bankruptcy and divorce cases, and I heard of civil cases versus organized crime figures (with particular attention to the late Mr. Raymond Loreda Salvatore Patriarca, who spent the 1930's as a local small-time crook in my area while his family grew inexplicably rich (including his brother's apple orchard which is now a major toxic clean-up site), and the late Mr. Frank Peter Balistrieri, who, with a couple of years of law school under his belt, became a master of setting of front men to purchase Las Vagas casinos with his money (as Balistrieri himself had been banned from business dealings with casinos)), which show how interests in realty can be concealed by individuals, and just as easily by corporations using the corporate veil and a shell0game of subsidiary corporations owned by partnerships and individuals acting at the behest of unscrupulous corporations. That's why I say, for corporations, income taxation, and LIMITED LIFESPAN (say, 50 years).
Waddya tink?
Although "interests" in real estate can perhaps be "concealed," real estate
itself cannot be concealed from local taxing authorities as most other things can. And I assume you would agree that, the more the tax burden is shifted off the private created values of
labor and
capital and onto the publicly created value of
land, the less incentive anyone would have to "conceal" their "interests" in a particular land title to begin with.
As for corporations, I think the first order of business is to abolish
corporate personhood. Once that is done, then we can argue about whether or not we should tax their "income" (as opposed to the value of their landholdings) or impose some sort of "life span."