https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/01/16/the-case-for-more-state-spending-on-r-and-d
The case for substantially greater public investment in R&D is already a compelling one. Yet perhaps there is an even stronger argument to be made. Much of the technological and commercial wealth created by corporations ultimately rests, directly or indirectly, on decades of publicly funded science: fundamental discoveries, university research, scientific infrastructure and knowledge produced long before a profitable application could even be imagined. Companies are entitled to capture rewards for entrepreneurship, investment and risk-taking, but the intellectual foundations on which many of those rewards are built were often financed collectively. This raises an uncomfortable but legitimate question that i raised in a previous post: Should corporate pay a symbolic 1% fee due to public-funded science-related inspiration ? https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2020/10/northeastern-university-intellectual.html
Such a contribution would not be a tax on innovation. It could instead be understood as a mechanism for sustaining the scientific commons from which future innovation will emerge a small recycling of privately captured value into the public knowledge infrastructure that helped create it. The question becomes even more relevant in an era in which multinational corporations have become extraordinarily sophisticated at minimizing their tax liabilities while simultaneously benefiting from research ecosystems financed by taxpayers.
