Month: March 2013

The “sequester” that went into effect on March 1st is another clear indication of the stranglehold that anti-tax zealots still have over Washington. While lawmakers across the political spectrum (and particularly those outside the Beltway) oppose the sequester’s $85 billion in across-the-board cuts, the failure to reach a deal to replace these cuts rests entirely with anti-tax lawmakers who have blocked any agreement that would include any revenue increases at all.

The primary argument made to justify this anti-tax position is that the fiscal cliff deal already raised a substantial amount of revenue; they’re saying the President “already got” his tax increase.  According to the official scorekeepers at the Congressional Budget Office however, the fiscal cliff deal actually reduces revenue by almost $4 trillion over the next decade because it made most of the Bush tax cuts permanent, renewed a slew of special interest tax breaks for a year, and extended some expanded refundable tax credits for five years.

Even if you accept that the Fiscal Cliff “raised” $620 billion in revenue (measured against what would have happened if Congress had extended all the tax cuts instead of 85 percent of them), the reality is that having anything close to a balanced approach to deficit reduction should include raising a whole lot more revenue. This may be news to Republican House Speaker John Boehner, who recently asked “When is the president going to address the spending side of this?” But Congress has already enacted $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue raised by the fiscal cliff deal. If the sequester is allowed to stay in effect, or is replaced entirely by spending cuts, the ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases will rise to as high as 5-to-1.

For his part, President Obama has offered a plan that would replace the sequester with $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction, including $1,130 billion in spending cuts and $680 billion in revenue increases. The President is proposing to raise about $583 billion of the $680 billion in revenue by limiting the tax savings of each dollar of certain deductions and exclusions to 28 cents.

President Obama’s plan, however, does not ask for nearly enough revenue to replace the trillions lost by making the Bush tax cuts permanent, or to even make the level of revenue increases equal to the level of spending cuts enacted during his first term. In fact, if Congress enacted President Obama’s plan as is, it would still mean that well over $2 in spending cuts will have been enacted for every $1 in revenue increases. 

The fairest approach would be to replace the entirety of the sequester cuts with new revenue. To accomplish this, lawmakers should not only limit deductions and exclusions as President Obama is proposing, but should also consider raising hundreds of billions of dollars more by eliminating the tax breaks and loopholes that allow wealthy individuals and corporations to shelter their income from taxation.

Taking a step back, it’s simply unjustifiable to proceed with devastating spending cuts that would reduce already meager unemployment benefits by eleven percent, or deny aid to as many as 750,000 women and children, just to preserve exorbitant, unwarranted tax breaks for the wealthiest individuals and profitable corporations.

A group of so far undisclosed corporations are forming a lobbying coalition called Let’s Invest for Tomorrow (LIFT) to press Congress to enact a “territorial” tax system. The coalition should be named Let’s Invest Elsewhere (LIE), because that’s exactly what American multinational corporations would be encouraged to do under a territorial tax system.

A “territorial” tax system is a euphemism to describe a tax system that exempts offshore corporate profits from the U.S. corporate tax.

U.S. corporations are already allowed to “defer” (delay indefinitely) paying U.S. taxes on their offshore profits until those profits are brought back to the U.S. This creates an incentive for U.S. corporations to shift operations (and jobs) offshore or just disguise their U.S. profits as offshore profits so that U.S. taxes can be deferred. Completely exempting those offshore profits from U.S. taxes would obviously increase the incentives to shift jobs and profits offshore.

A CTJ report from 2011 explains these problems in detail and concludes that Congress should move in the opposite direction by ending “deferral” rather than adopting a territorial tax system. The stakes are getting higher each year as U.S. corporations hold larger and larger stashes of profits offshore. (A recent CTJ paper finds that 290 of the Fortune 500 have reported their profits held offshore, which collectively reached $1.6 trillion at the end of 2011.)

The Public Opposes Territorial Tax Proposals – But Will Congress Listen?

In a world where politicians actually did what voters wanted, we would not have to worry that this coalition might actually succeed in its goal of bringing about a territorial tax system, which the public would clearly oppose.

For example, a survey taken in January of 2013 asked respondents, “Do you approve or disapprove of allowing corporations to not pay any U.S. taxes on profits that they earn in foreign countries?” 73 percent of respondents said they “disapprove” and 57 percent said they “strongly disapprove.” The same survey found that 83 percent of respondents approved (including 59 percent who strongly approved) of a proposal to “Increase tax on U.S. corporations’ overseas profits to ensure it is as much as tax on their U.S. profits.”

And yet, it’s unclear that lawmakers are paying attention to the interests or opinions of ordinary Americans.

It is true that Vice President Biden went out of his way at the Democratic National Convention to criticize the territorial system proposed by Mitt Romney. And it’s also true that the “framework” for corporate tax reform released by the White House in February of 2012 refused to endorse a territorial system.

But the framework only rejected a “pure territorial system.” CTJ pointed out that the time that probably no country has a “pure territorial system,” so this does not provide much assurance or guidance.

Meanwhile, it has long been rumored that many of the Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee (the Senate’s tax-writing committee) favor a territorial system.

Republican lawmakers, for their part, have long fully endorsed a territorial system. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp made public his proposals for a territorial system in October 2011. That very day, CTJ released a letter signed by several national labor unions, small business associations and good government groups opposing Camp’s move, but the response from lawmakers was relatively muted.

Perhaps more disturbing, at his recent confirmation hearings, the new Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, appeared open to the idea of a territorial system.

Similar Corporate Lobbying Coalition Failed to Get a Temporary Exemption for Offshore Profits (Repatriation Holiday)

Some readers will remember that during 2011 and 2012 a group of corporations calling itself WIN America pushed for an tax amnesty for offshore profits (which they preferred to call a “repatriation holiday.”) The coalition was made up of companies who believed that Congress might not be naïve enough to give them the much bigger prize, a territorial system. As explained in a CTJ fact sheet, a repatriation holiday would temporarily exempt offshore profits from U.S. taxes, while a territorial system would permanently exempt those offshore profits from U.S. taxes, and would therefore cause even greater problems.

WIN America did give up and disband. But that could be largely because influential lawmakers like Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp are indicating that the bigger prize, a territorial system, is within reach.

Complexity Helps the Lobbyists and Lawmakers Who Hope the Public Does Not Catch On

It may be that politicians remain open to tax proposals that the public hates because the issues involved are so complicated that they believe no one is paying attention. This makes it vital to call attention to the effects a territorial system would have on ordinary Americans.

The issues are admittedly complicated. For example, Americans have been presented over and over with a very simple story about how the U.S. has a corporate tax that is more burdensome than the corporate taxes of other countries, and that our companies need new rules that make them “competitive” with global competitors.

The reality is very different and much more complicated. While the U.S. has a relatively high statutory tax rate for corporations, the U.S. corporate tax has so many loopholes that most major multinational corporations seem to be paying a lower effective tax rate in the U.S. than they pay in the other countries where they have operations. CTJ’s major 2011 report on corporate taxes studied most of the profitable Fortune 500 companies and found (on pages 10-11) that among those with significant offshore profits (making up a tenth or more of their overall profits) two-thirds actually paid a lower effective tax rate in the U.S. than in the other countries where they operated.

On the other hand, there are a number of countries that have extremely low corporate tax rates or no corporate tax at all – mostly very small countries with little actual business activity – where U.S. companies like to claim their profits are generated, in order to avoid U.S. taxes. These are the offshore tax havens that exploit the rule allowing U.S. corporations to “defer” U.S. taxes on their offshore profits. If the U.S. completely exempts these profits from U.S. taxes (in other words, enacts a territorial system) these incentives will be greatly increased.

This is confirmed by a recent report from the Congressional Research Service finding that in 2008, American multinational companies reported earning 43 percent of their $940 billion in overseas profits in the five very small tax-haven countries, even though only four percent of their foreign workforce and seven percent of their foreign investments were in these countries. In contrast, the five “traditional economies,” where American companies had 40 percent of their foreign workers and 34 percent of their foreign investments, accounted for only 14 percent of American multinationals’ reported overseas’ profits.

These statistics are outrageous and demonstrate that U.S. corporations are engaging in various accounting tricks in order to make it appear (for tax purposes) that their profits are generated in countries where they won’t be taxed. The LIFT coalition will count on the fact that this is simply too difficult for ordinary people to understand – which makes educating the public about this more important than ever.

Conspicuously absent from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s new 2014 fiscal year spending plan were the across-the-board personal income tax cuts he defended so vehemently just last year.  Governor Christie now wants Garden State residents to believe Democrats in the legislature are to blame for the lack of promised tax relief.  But, the facts are that the state cannot afford a tax cut this year any more than it could last year, the Governor’s overly optimistic revenue growth projections notwithstanding.  

A new editorial from the New Jersey Star Ledger calls Governor Christie’s rhetoric “pure fantasy” and lays out the facts:

“Gov. Chris Christie knows that New Jersey can’t afford a tax cut right now, so he didn’t include one in his budget plan.

But he also knows he can’t admit this if he wants to win a Republican presidential primary in 2016. So he made clear during his budget address Tuesday that he intends to campaign on the merits of an income tax cut this year anyway.

“I am content to let the voters decide this in November,” he warned Democratic legislators.

Here we go again. The governor even promised Democrats that if they agree to cut taxes this year, he will find a way to pay for it.

That’s a remarkable claim. Because he says he can’t afford to rescind the tax hike he imposed on the working poor, or restore the funding for the six Planned Parenthood clinics he shut down. He can’t afford to restore property tax rebates, as promised. He can’t afford to provide adequate funding for state colleges and universities, among the most starved in the nation. And he can’t replenish the fund for open-space purchases…

So the governor’s suggestion that he has a secret vault with enough money to finance a tax cut is pure fantasy. The income-tax cut he proposed would cost $1.4 billion a year when phased in, with the wealthiest 1 percent claiming almost half the benefit.

If the governor really campaigns on this, understand that is pure show. It is a pitch designed for national TV, where gullible hosts who don’t know New Jersey will no doubt bobble their heads some more. It is an act for the national audience, and New Jersey is his prop…”

If an unexpected revenue bump does come along, Christie’s tax cuts for the wealthiest cannot be where it gets spent. Instead, it should be used to reverse the Governor’s previous cuts to the Earned Income Tax Credit, to restore property tax rebates he gutted and generally reinvest in programs that have been revenue starved since the Great Recession began.

Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley recently unveiled his plan to raise and reform his state’s gasoline tax.  Local TV stations predictably responded by interviewing drivers unhappy with the high price of gas, while (also predictably) failing to explain that Maryland’s gas taxes are not to blame for those high prices.

A new chart from our partner organization, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) shows that Maryland’s flat gas tax has long been declining as inflation has chipped away at its value.  If the legislature does not act on the Governor’s recommendation, ITEP projects that by 2014 Maryland’s gas tax rate will reach its lowest (inflation adjusted) level in 91 years.  Only in 1922 and 1923 did Maryland levy a lower gas tax.

Moreover, the gas tax increase proposed by the Governor is actually very modest.  The plan (which would tie the gas tax to both inflation and gas prices) would result in roughly a 9 cent increase by 2014.  That’s significantly less than the nearly 16 cent increase that ITEP found would be needed to return Maryland’s gas tax to its purchasing power as of 1992, when it was last raised.  Taking an even longer-term perspective, ITEP finds that Maryland’s inflation-adjusted gas tax rate has historically averaged 41.1 cents per gallon.  If the Governor’s plan is enacted, the inflation-adjusted rate over the next decade would average just 31 cents.