FTFY
*BTFY (broke that for you)
The problem with setting fines as a percentage of revenue is that it is far more punishing on some types of businesses than others, and it doesn't treat all types of businesses equally. For example, let's say you have a widget manufacturer and a fintech company, both found guilty of some anti-competitive violation and fined 20% of their annual revenue each.
The widget manufacturer might have billions in revenue but its material costs, operational expenses, and labour costs are much higher because manufacturing widgets is a very physical process. These costs can't be cut to save money once the fine is paid, because the fewer workers you hire and the fewer raw materials you buy, the fewer widgets you make and the effect on revenue is much more direct.
In contrast, a fintech firm which has a similar level of revenue has far lower costs, meaning more of their revenue is either (1) profit, or (2) spent on non-production expenses like marketing or lobbying, both of which can be easily scaled back without immediate impact on revenue.
The consequence of this is that a 20% fine of revenue is devastating to the widget manufacturer, but it is just an inconvenience to the fintech company.
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.