Owen Jones tells us that:

Given industrial scale tax avoidance on the part of so many large corporations, here is an argument that needs reiterating time and time again. Without much demonised state largesse, no company could profit. The state provides them with roads and other basic infrastructure, and protects their property. It educates their workforce and, through public healthcare, prevents them from becoming so sick they cannot work.

It’s possible to argue that we, we the citizenry, have the rule of law, health care, transport and so on because we think they all benefit us, the citizenry. At which point any benefits to business seem fairly trivial. We also seem to rather like the things that business produces so, again, that they benefit as well seems unobjectionable.

But there is still that argument over how these things are provided. So, which is better - in quality - public health care or private? Public schools or state ones? The British experience is not that that which is tax provided is better now, is it?

So, if we’ve managed to understand Owen’s argument correctly it’s that business must pay more tax because the state provides things expensively and badly. Which is not, we think, one of the most convincing arguments ever put forward.