If there is one thing companies and rich people are good at regardless of their sector it's making them appear poor on paper

This is not true. Companies openly show themselves to be very rich on paper. What you're thinking of is the systemic exploitation of tax loopholes to avoid tax liability. That's not the same thing as "looking poor".

Consider this document from Amazon (PDF). The company openly shows its net income to be some $30 billion in the first quarter of 2026.

The number reported to investors is extremely important and there is a voluminous amount of legislation to ensure it isn't manipulated (accountants who help a company cook its books will lose their licences and could go to prison), because it's the basis for shareholder decisions regarding the company's stock. If there's any number that the 1% will not allow to be manipulated, this is the one.

You are, however, correct that this does make it hard to punish a company that isn't currently profitable. But that's really just pushing against the limits of what a monetary fine is even capable of achieving, because you will eventually run into the problem of it being impossible to draw blood from a stone.

A better way to approach this is to fine companies a portion of their equity. So a company which is hit with a 10% equity fine means that 10 new "golden shares" of the company are minted and passed into the possession of the Government, while the remaining shares of the company (owned by its shareholders) now only represent a 90% ownership stake. The golden shares would represent a fixed amount of equity and cannot be diluted by the issuance of more stock. They can be disposed of, or they can become an investment to fund things like social programmes and public pension funds.

Fining companies a portion of their equity, in my opinion, is the most effective way to punish them, because it goes directly after the line which is supposed to go up. Suddenly, a 10% fine means line go down 10%. That's a huge incentive not to do the thing that results in a fine.

So firstly, that doesn't matter, because net income is one of the most regulated figures in financial history, and manipulating it has got people into extremely deep trouble. Even rich people. If Amazon paid zero tax, which in most years, it doesn't, then it is because of the manipulation of tax loopholes, not because of net income manipulation.

Secondly, I don't advocate for monetary fines as a way to punish corporate lawbreaking at all. No matter what system you choose to calculate fines, there will always be problems with it. There's a more creative way to go about it.

You might notice that it's possible to put humans who break laws in jail, but not companies. But there's a punishment you can inflict on a company that you can't inflict on a human: you can confiscate part of their existence. The way that would work is a fine denominated in the equity of the company. So a 10% equity fine would mean that 10 new "golden shares" of the company get minted and pass into the possession of the Government, while the remaining common and preferred stock of the company now only represents 90% ownership.

This sort of fine would result in a direct 10% decrease in the stock price of the company, as the holder of the golden shares is now entitled to 10% of the company's dividends and gets 10% of the votes in corporate elections. Since the golden shares each represent a fixed percentage of equity, they cannot be watered down by the issuance of more stock. The golden shares can either be disposed of or they can become an investment for the state pension fund/sovereign wealth fund.

Since it seems that all stockholders and executives care about nowadays is to make the line go up, forcing the line to go down directly is a great way to discourage the behaviour that results in the line going down.

This is a bad line of reasoning to use in penal law. Have a look at the legal code of Draco of Athens (after whose name an interesting adjective was coined meaning "excessively harsh"). Why was it so harsh? Well, in Draco's view, all the minor crimes deserved death. It's not that complicated, really. If you don't want to die, don't steal cabbages.