I would think yes. A long answer follows:
Malaysian glovemakers have reaped quite a fortune from the Covid-19 pandemic. Top Glove’s 2020 financial year net profit soared to nearly RM2 billion from RM400 million the year before (approximately 5 times higher). It is not the only one striking gold. Another large glovemaker Hartalega had its half-year net profit for 2020 rising close to RM800 million compared to slightly below RM200 million in the same period last year (about 4 times higher).
The extraordinary profit has made windfall tax a popular notion among some crowd. Member of Parliament Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman and his party MUDA are lobbying the government to impose windfall tax on Top Glove and other glovemakers.
Top Glove paid nearly RM400 million worth of tax in the 2020 full financial year. For Hartalega, they paid almost RM200 million out of their half-year revenue. A proper windfall tax could easily double that. That is a lot of JASAs that could be funded.
Windfall tax is arbitary and carries corruption risk
I am not all too comfortable with windfall tax. The problem is its arbitrariness and with arbitariness, corruption risk. At the very least, its arbitrary nature creates room for negotiation between businesses under the microscope and the authority exerting the tax. The bigger the business, the stronger the concern for corruption is.
Rule-based approach addresses corruption risk
Assuming we are merely interested in getting that additional revenue only, I think there is a better way to do so. We can possibly design a rule-based approach mimicking windfall tax. That is progressive corporate income tax.
In search of a mimic
Currently, the Malaysian corporate income tax is flat, with rate imposed at 24%. (Well, it is not that simple. Our corporate income tax is somewhat progressive, but only for SMEs. SMEs pay 17% income tax on the first half a million of net income, and then 24% for any profit above that. Yes, two brackets.)
There are some debates on why corporate income tax is flat and not progressive. I will not be going there and it is a whole other debate to be had.
But strictly from tax collection perspective and for the purpose of finding a mirror policy, I would think progressive corporate income tax would be better than an arbitrary windfall tax. Better in the sense that it mirrors windfall tax collection while minimizing corruption risk.
The challenge is to finding such a mimic is this: how could we generalize the brackets and the tax rates so that it could capture supernormal profit across industries fairly, while not punishing the others?
That is a difficult question to answer because each company or sector has its own typical profit level. For instance, a supernormal profit level as currently enjoyed by glovemakers are terrible figures for giants like Petronas during normal times.
In any case, theoretically, a progressive corporate income tax mimicking windfall tax would have a J-curve (or even an L-curve): mostly flat rates for most income brackets, but rises dramatically for supernormal bracket.
Hybrid?
Alternatively, we could add an if-then function to the corporate income tax code: if your yearly net profit is above a certain level and it grows by more than 400% (or some superprofit benchmark) compared to the previous year, then you would face a tax rate higher than 24%. This would be a hybrid between progressive corporate income tax and a windfall tax, and it would still be rule-based.