andrewducker | A question for any accountants in the audience

At the moment we tax companies on their profits, and leave a variety of ways of legitimately avoiding tax if the company spends some of their money on things that the government views as good (training, various Green initiatives, etc.) This complicates things, and makes it harder to tell if companies are doing them for their own good, or simply to avoid tax.

Now, some people would say that we don't care why companies do things, and if we're getting them to do more socially good things through tax bribery then that's great. But others clearly feel that companies shouldn't be avoiding paying their fair share.

So, my question is this - would there be more overhead, or less, in shifting all of the positive stuff out of taxes entirely, and doing them separately? In saying "You all pay all of your tax. But the government subsidises you in doing various things that they'd like you to do."

Assuming, that this resulted in companies getting the same money and doing the same things (to make it simpler), would the resulting system be easier for companies, their accountants and the government? Or would it require even more work to administer?