Earlier quoted context omitted.
Initially I too thought this was a bad idea, but if you think about it and set the tax rate really low - like a handful of percent, say 1% or 2%, not more than 5% - it might actually work. Because even if the corporate tax rate is 30%, but we only collect it on profit, which ends up being only 5%-10% of revenue. So in actual fact, if the corporation was honest, we're really only collecting 30% of 5% or so, which is a…
Seems like that would lead to massive vertical consolidation. If you have a retailer buying from a distributor buying from manufacturer buying from a raw material producer, the revenue flowing from each to the next would be taxed again and again, but a single company doing everything would only pay once. Is that something you want to encourage? A VAT might make more sense, since you can deduct the VAT you paid to you…
There is nothing inherently wrong about taxing the revenue at each stage as material flows between companies. Right now we tax those companies profitability instead, and at a much higher rate. So there is an incentive for companies to minimise profitability in terms of how much tax they have to pay. If instead we tax revenue directly it could simplify things and mean that they could optimise profit to some degree. It could lead to more vertical integration but it would also lead to the dissolution of accounting schemes between companies like the double Dutch Irish sandwich (or whatever it's called). Because every time a company makes revenue it would be taxed in that country.
In general you could think of a revenue tax as more of a land tax for companies. Real-estate owners generally pay government an amount per year which is just because they own that property. So think of a revenue tax as one which is applied to businesses.