Why don't we legislate a new category of taxation for gig economy companies like Uber? Make them pay more taxes and support a new social safety net (especially universal healthcare) without changing their business model.
The term "dependent contractor" is sometimes used for this idea of a third category. Whether it actually provides workers with the benefits and protections that employees with similar working arrangements are entitled to remains to be seen.
It's the consumers using the services that pay extra costs associated with these services. Socializing the costs through general taxes across the greater public that does not use gig economy services is not good.
And the benefit of doing it my way is that it takes one session in congress and no further actions, whereas building, maintaining, and policing an entirely new regulatory framework would likely be on net costlier than raising income taxes by a few basis points on the top couple tax brackets.
Up to a certain point, corporate taxes do have a marginal benefit to society as a separate source of taxation. Generally speaking you want to spread your sources of tax revenue to minimize distortions and maximize revenue. This advice breaks down for small tax haven countries of course, and I think that larger countries should mitigate their most disruptive schemes. Citizens of large countries should not be deprived of a great avenue for taxation because of financial acrobatics devised by smaller countries. That all being said, I also think that income taxes should be increased at the higher end to support a greater safety net.
