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Why is investing in mostly flat or negative return projects assumed to be a net-good?

It's generally assumed a corporation would be more interested in positive returns on it's investments. Seems like if a company stops investing in positive ROI projects, it won't grow, and then won't survive as long? I haven't thought about it much, but I think on a macro scale even a negative return project still circulates that money back out, in the form of salaries or materials or something, but that may be a naive thought.

Obviously there are ways to break that, like tax evasion, but hopefully there are other ways to deal with that.

But you're operating on the assumption that companies always have positive investment opportunities available.

This is not the case, and in the event such an opportunity is available, companies would pursue it regardless of the tax environment, because making some money net of tax is better than no money whatsoever.

What such a policy would actually do is incentivize a massive mis-allocation of capital while simultaneously resulting in lower tax revenues. I fail to see how this makes anyone better off.

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