Neoliberals argue that when economies compete to lower corporate tax rates and regulation, business investment will rise as the state’s ‘distortions’ of the market are withdrawn. Tax competition was also joined to the principle that firms should focus on the maximisation of shareholder value, in preference to any deeper social role. Innes examines the highly value-laden nature of tax models and explains how they replicate the Soviet planning assumption that enterprises are dependably productive economic actors. In the empirical section Innes shows how this policy combination in the UK has produced negative developmental outcomes across the board: for the nature of the large business corporation, for wider economic performance, for the fiscal authority of the state, and for public faith in the integrity of the political class. The theoretical dependence on a closed system ontology of the economy condemns neoclassical tax modelling to edit out the real terrain of corporate incentives and behaviour. As in the Soviet system it also endows firms with excessive political leverage in relation to the state, for example, through the significant corporate capture of tax strategy in HMRC.