My proposal is simple, businesses start with some sort of baseline tax rate (TBD) across the board per business size classification (small, medium, large). Businesses would be able to reduce their tax rate based on a number of factors. All of which are meant to benefit employees or consumers.
Examples are:
Company pays 100% of the insurance plan costs per employee
Company pays 100% of all medical expenses for all employees
Company funds employee retirement account
Company works to create the same or better products while also lowering the cost to customers
Company provides a minimum number of paid vacation days/weeks and actually allows them to take them without risk or penalty
Company creates jobs in the United States / brings back jobs from overseas
Company pays employees a wage above the state or local average without passing costs to consumers
Company invests in local programs whose goal is to rehabilitate people dealing with addiction
Company invests in local programs that work to reeducate/train veterans
By using these factors you could create a system by which the more the company takes care of its community and employees, the less their tax burden would be. One stipulation would have to be that this would need to apply to all employees, not just part. You could then map percentage points (whole or partial) to each benefit that the company was providing.
I am using random numbers for this example
If the tax % for a large company was 20%, and say we weighted all the items I listed at being worth a percent in value. By implementing 5 things they automatically reduce their tax burden to 15%. This could save the company millions of dollars. Between this and also allowing the companies to write off these costs, it should give them the opportunity to do the right thing for both the employees, consumers, as well as the community while keeping shareholders happy.
The goal is to incentivize businesses to take care of their employees, make the costs for consumers cheaper without reducing quality, which should also allow them to invest in the company, which would hopefully enable further growth.
It also enables the companies to be more involved in the local problems, which would hopefully reduce the financial burden on local, state and federal government.