We retired Tax Justice Blog in April 2017. For new content on issues related to tax justice, go to www.justtaxesblog.org
In a July 16 letter, 30 national organizations asked members of Congress to reject a proposal by Congressman John Delaney of Maryland because it rewards the most aggressive corporate tax dodgers with tax breaks and even gives them control of a new bank that would be created to fund American infrastructure. The plan is one in a history of Congressional schemes to hand corporations a massive tax break under the pretense that it will help the U.S. economy.
Delaney’s proposal would allow a “repatriation holiday,” meaning American multinational corporations could bring their offshore profits to the U.S. without paying the U.S. taxes that would normally be due, on the condition that they purchase bonds to finance a new bank that would be set up to fund infrastructure projects.
A CTJ report released in June explains that much (and perhaps most) of the profits that American corporations claim to hold “offshore” are actually already invested somehow in the American economy. So, these profits are not truly “offshore,” and the argument that the U.S. economy is somehow deprived of these dollars doesn’t really hold up.
As the CTJ report explains, the corporations most likely to benefit from Delaney’s proposed “holiday” are not those with actual business activities offshore, because those companies have their offshore assets tied up in things like factories and equipment. The benefits are much more likely to go to those American corporations that have made their U.S. profits appear to be foreign profits by artificially shifting them to subsidiary companies in offshore tax havens. These subsidiaries are often nothing more than a post office box, and the profits they claim to generate are easy to shift around using accounting gimmicks.
Incredibly, Rep. Delaney’s proposal would allow those corporations repatriating the most offshore profits — that is, those corporations that are most aggressive and successful at tax dodging — the right to nominate the majority of the members of the board controlling the infrastructure bank.
As the report and letter point out, the last tax amnesty for offshore corporate profits, enacted in 2004, did nothing to create jobs and actually benefitted many corporations that cut their American workforces. The Joint Committee on Taxation found that a repeat of this type of measure would lose revenue partly because it would encourage American companies to shift (on paper, using accounting gimmicks) even more profits into offshore tax havens where they are not subject to U.S. taxes.