Author: tarek

Max Baucus, the Senator from Montana who chairs the committee with jurisdiction over our tax code, has made public a portion of his ideas for tax reform. Multinational corporations that have lobbied Baucus for years are unhappy because his proposal would (at least somewhat) restrict their ability to shift jobs and profits offshore. Citizens for Tax Justice and other advocates for fair and adequate taxes are unhappy because his proposal would not raise any new revenue overall — at a time when children are being kicked out of Head Start and all sorts of public investments are restricted because of an alleged budget crisis.  

The Need for Revenue-Raising Corporate Tax Reform

Materials released from Senator Baucus’s staff explain that this part of his proposal is “intended to be revenue-neutral in the long-term.” The idea behind “revenue-neutral” corporate tax reform is that Congress would close loopholes that allow corporations to avoid taxes under the current rules, but use the savings to pay for a reduction in the corporate tax rate.

Among the general public, there is very little support for this. The Gallup Poll has found for years that more than 60 to 70 percent of Americans believe large corporations pay “too little” in taxes.

There is almost no public support for the specific idea of using revenue savings from loophole-closing to lower tax rates. A new poll commissioned by Americans for Tax Fairness found that when asked how Congress should use revenue from “closing corporate loopholes and limiting deductions for the wealthy,” 82 percent preferred the option to “[r]educe the deficit and make new investments,” while just 9 percent preferred the option to “[r]educe tax rates on corporations and the wealthy.”

Of course, Baucus also says that he “believes tax reform as a whole should raise significant revenue,” which would mean that reform of the personal income tax would raise revenue. But there are questions about how that can work, given that he also wants to reduce personal income tax rates.

A growing number of consumer groups, faith-based groups, labor organizations and others have called on Congress to raise revenue from reform of the corporate income tax, as well as from reform of the personal income tax. In 2011, 250 organizations, including groups from every state, signed a letter to lawmakers calling for revenue-positive corporate tax reform, and a similar letter in 2012 was signed by over 500 organizations.

CTJ has repeatedly demonstrated that most corporate profits are not subject to the personal income tax and therefore completely escape taxation if they slip out of the corporate income tax. We have also explained that the corporate income tax is a progressive tax, which is needed in a tax system that is not nearly as progressive as most people believe.

The Need to Stop Corporations from Shifting Jobs and Profits Offshore

While CTJ and other tax experts are still going through the fine print of Baucus’s proposal to understand its full impact, it is clear to us that the proposal would stop some American corporations from using offshore tax havens to avoid U.S. taxes as successfully as they do today. Some multinational corporations are upset by this, but that doesn’t in itself mean that Baucus’s proposal is extremely strict.

CTJ has demonstrated that several very large and profitable corporations — like American Express, Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Nike and others — are making profits appear to be earned in offshore tax havens so that they pay no taxes on them at all. Any proposal that makes the code even slightly stricter will cause these companies to pay more and, naturally, cause them to complain bitterly. 

These companies are taking advantage of the most problematic break in the corporate income tax, which is “deferral,” the rule allowing American corporations to “defer” (delay indefinitely) paying U.S. corporate income taxes on the profits of their offshore subsidiaries until those profits are officially brought to the United States. Deferral is really a tax break for moving operations offshore or for using accounting gimmicks to make U.S. profits appear to be generated in a country with no corporate income tax (like Bermuda or the Cayman Islands or some other tax haven).

CTJ has long argued that the best solution is to simply repeal deferral and subject all profits of our corporations to U.S. corporate taxes in the year they are earned, no matter where they are earned. (We already have a separate foreign-tax-credit rule that reduces U.S. corporate taxes to the extent that companies pay corporate taxes to other countries, to prevent double-taxation.) Barring this, Congress could at least curb the worst abuses of deferral with the type of reforms proposed by Senator Carl Levin.

The big multinational corporations lobbied Baucus and others to expand deferral into an even bigger break, an permanent exemption for offshore profits, often called a “territorial” tax system, which CTJ and several small business groups, consumer groups and labor organizations have always opposed.

Baucus did not propose either approach. His proposal is somewhat like a territorial tax system except that he would place a minimum tax on the offshore profits of American corporations, which would take away much of the advantage that the corporations thought they might obtain after their years of lobbying. American multinational corporations would be required to pay a minimum level of tax on their offshore profits, during the year that they are earned.

But if a corporation is paying corporate taxes to a foreign government at a rate as high or higher than the U.S. minimum tax, there would never be any U.S. taxes on the profits generated in that country. This means that offshore profits of American corporations would still be subject to a lower tax rate than domestic profits, which may preserve some incentive to shift jobs and profits offshore.

Baucus proposes two different versions of a minimum tax. One would require that profits generated in other countries be taxed at a rate that is at least 80 percent of the regular U.S. corporate tax rate. Baucus has not yet revealed what corporate tax rate he will propose, but if one assumes it is 28 percent, that would mean that the foreign profits must be taxed at a rate of at least 22.4 percent. If they are taxed by the foreign country at a rate of, say, 18 percent, that would mean the corporation would pay U.S. corporate taxes of 4.4 percent. (18+4.4=22.4)

The second option Baucus offers would require that “active” profits generated abroad be taxed at a rate that is 60 percent of the U.S. tax rate while “passive” profits generated abroad be taxed at the full U.S. rate (both before foreign tax credits). The concept of “active” income and “passive” income already is a major part of our tax code, but Baucus would define them differently for this option. The basic idea is that “passive” income (like interest payments, rents and royalties) is income that is extremely easy to move from one subsidiary to another and therefore easily used for tax avoidance if it’s not taxed at the full U.S. rate. 

The Baucus proposal has several other innovations that are too numerous to fully explain here. To give one example, the proposal says that if an American corporation has a subsidiary in another country that earns profits by selling to the U.S. market, those profits would be subject to the full U.S. corporate tax rate in the year that they are earned. How well this would work might depend heavily on how easily this can be administered.

Since there are no public estimates of the revenue impacts of the provisions Baucus has proposed, it is not yet clear how important many of them are. Stay tuned as we examine this proposal and learn more.

(View as a PDF)

Tax Policy Advocacy Communications Director:

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and Citizens for Tax Justice are seeking an experienced and mission-driven Communications Director to help us expand our reach and impact as the only dedicated tax policy organizations advocating for low- and middle-income Americans.

The CTJ/ITEP Communications Director is involved hands-on with outreach to multiple audiences: the news media, the new media, federal and state lawmakers, national and state policy and coalition partners, donors, supporters and social media networks. Collaborating with the federal and state policy teams, the Communications Director plays a key role in planning and strategizing report releases, press statements, press releases, press events, blog posts and op-eds. The Director also works with the Development Director on a quarterly donor newsletter and other fundraising writing and activities.  The Communications Director also edits and manages the blog and social media channels.  It is a small organization; the Communications Director supervises no personnel at this time.

Applicants should possess the following skills, characteristics and experience:
-Minimum six years experience and strong track record in nonprofit, political or advocacy media relations.
-Experience managing or directing communications programs or projects.
-Excellent writing skills across a range of genres, and experience editing policy writing.
-Ability to work independently and to manage up.
-Ease and familiarity with digital media and systems – blog interfaces, Twitter, e-blast software, etc.
-Ability to collaborate on communications projects with state and federal coalition partners.

How to Apply:

-Submit a cover letter describing your interest in the issue and your relevant experience. Please also mention two or three examples of successful communications projects or efforts for which you were responsible, and your measures for those successes, too.

-Provide us with your resume.

-Send these two documents to jobs@ctj.org and we will acknowledge receipt.

-Please, no phone calls.

We seek to fill the position quickly. The deadline for submitting resumes and cover letters is December 1, 2013. We will be scheduling interviews December 2 through 13. Candidates invited for interviews will also be asked to perform a short writing assignment, provide three professional references and indicate their desired salary range and available start date.

Salary will be commensurate with experience; benefits are very generous.

About CTJ/ITEP

CTJ is a 501(c)(4) organization that advocates progressive tax policies with a focus on federal legislative issues. ITEP is the corresponding 501(c)(3) organization researching tax fairness issues. ITEP works primarily on state tax issues but also provides research on federal tax issues to CTJ. For more information about our work, visit CTJ at www.ctj.org or ITEP at www.itep.org.

The District of Columbia’s Tax Revision Commission heard from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP, CTJ’s partner organization), last week about options for lessening the regressivity of DC’s tax system. In testimony before the Commission, ITEP’s Matt Gardner explained how enhancements to DC’s standard deduction, personal exemption, and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) could be enacted without breaking the bank, as long as they’re paired with reforms like phasing-out exemptions and deductions for high-income taxpayers, or eliminating the District’s unusual tax break for out-of-state bond interest.

We got our first glimpse this week of what tax reform could mean for Nebraskans next year.  Members of Nebraska’s Tax Modernization Committee sketched out details of a potential tax reform proposal, but will wait until next month to finalize the plan.  And so far, it looks like the Committee will be sticking to modest, sensible ideas like expanding the sales tax to some household services, indexing tax brackets for inflation, and cutting property taxes (slightly). Considering that Governor Dave Heineman’s commitment to doing away with the personal income tax (or at least significantly cutting it) is the reason for the Committee’s existence, it is a positive sign that its members are steering clear of more radical changes to the income tax.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s first appointed tax commission, the one charged with finding revenue-neutral options to reform the state’s tax system, released its recommendations last week for making the state’s tax code “simpler and fairer”.  Our friends at the Fiscal Policy Institute and New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness called the recommendations “a smorgasbord of reforms with a little something for everyone.”  The ideas include: expanding the sales tax base to services and currently exempted goods and using the new revenue to cut taxes for low- and middle-income families; reforming the corporate and bank franchise tax; and exempting middle-income families from New York’s estate tax. The question now is whether the Governor, (who can hardly find a tax he doesn’t hate), will consider these recommendations. Or, whether he will only focus on ideas coming from a second tax committee he appointed, with former Governor George Pataki at its helm, which is tasked with finding ways to simply cut $2 to $3 billion in taxes next year.

Last September, recommendations from Kentucky’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Tax Reform were released. ITEP deemed the Commission’s 453 page final report filled with tax reform recommendations “worth legislative consideration.” Yet, the Lexington Herald-Leader is reporting that, like the eight other previous tax studies, this report is simply “gathering dust.” Some lawmakers say that 2014 isn’t the year for tax reform, citing a difficult “political climate.” Let’s hope the tide changes and all the Commission’s work doesn’t go unutilized given the fiscal stress the state is already under.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) today released a draft proposal for changing the way the United States taxes multinational corporations. Robert McIntyre, the director of Citizens for Tax Justice, made the following statement about the draft:

“Senator Baucus promises that his proposals will not increase the paltry federal income taxes that multinational corporations now pay. He also promises that he will later propose changes to the taxes on domestic corporations, which will also be ‘revenue-neutral.’ And he also says that he ‘believes tax reform as a whole should raise significant revenue.’

“That must mean that Baucus plans to propose ‘significant’ increases in personal income taxes (or some new tax). Will this mean higher taxes on the rich? That seems unlikely, since Baucus is expected to propose a considerably lower top personal income tax rate. So that apparently will leave the middle class and maybe the poor holding the bag.

“That is certainly not what most Americans think tax reform should be about. Lawmakers should instead reform the corporate income tax in a way that raises significant revenue.”

A poll commissioned for Americans for Tax Fairness and released on November 13 shows almost no public support for the “revenue-neutral” approach to tax reform advanced by Rep. Dave Camp, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

One question put to respondents was how Congress should use revenue from “closing corporate loopholes and limiting deductions for the wealthy.”

To this, 82 percent preferred the option to “Reduce the deficit and make new investments,” while just 9 percent preferred the option to “Reduce tax rates on corporations and the wealthy.”

What 9 percent chose is basically the approach to tax reform laid out by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (in the various version of the infamous “Ryan Plan”) as well as the approach laid out by Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp. Both have said that tax loopholes and tax breaks should be reduced and/or eliminated and the revenue savings should be used to offset reductions in tax rates, including reducing the top personal income tax rate and the corporate income tax rate to 25 percent.

Of course, Camp and Ryan present their approach as more than simply reducing rates for corporations and wealthy individuals. They will continue to make the case that they can include provisions that help middle-income Americans directly.

But this will be an impossible case for them to make. After Ryan released the most recent version of his plan, CTJ demonstrated that the tax reform section would provide those whose annual income exceeds a million dollars with an average tax cut each year of at least $200,000. In other words, even if Congress eliminated all of the tax loopholes and tax breaks that Ryan put on the table, millionaires would still end up with a huge net tax cut because of the rate reductions. And if the plan would be implemented in a way that is truly “revenue-neutral” as Ryan and Camp claim, that would mean someone further down on the income ladder would have to pay more than they pay today.

The budget resolution approved by the Democratic majority in the Senate in the spring called for raising $975 billion in taxes over a decade from corporations and wealthy individuals. President Obama has taken a disappointing middle ground, arguinug that reform of the personal income tax should raise revenue, but reform of the corporate income tax (and the personal income tax insofar as it affects businesses) should be revenue-neutral.

On November 12th, Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed into law the largest state business tax break package in history for Boeing. The new law will give Boeing and its suppliers an estimated $8.7 billion in tax breaks between now and 2040. Even before this giant new subsidy, Boeing has already been staggeringly successful in avoiding state taxes. Over the past decade, Boeing has managed to avoid paying even a dime of state income taxes nationwide on $35 billion in pretax U.S. profits.

Read the Full Report

For years, the economic border war between Missouri and Kansas has been the topic of discussion in those states’ respective statehouses. In a January report titled The Job-Creation Shell Game, Good Jobs First writes, “There is no jobs border war more intense these days than the one raging in the Kansas City metropolitan area…Both states unabashedly poach businesses from each other, aided by similarly structured tax credits that allow footloose companies to retain large portions of their employees’ state personal income tax.”

Now, it appears, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon is finally determined to change that.  Nixon recently told a business group that, “This so-called border war between our two states has gone on long enough” and described it as “bad for taxpayers … bad for our state budget, and it’s not good for our economy.”  Since making these statements, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has indicated that he’s open to the idea of a truce, and the Kansas City Star explained how discussions surrounding how to implement such an agreement have been underway for more than a year.

In testimony before the National Conference of State Legislatures’ tax policy task force, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) made a strong case against the use of tax incentives to lure businesses: they often reward companies for activities they would have undertaken anyway; it’s difficult to ensure that their benefits remain entirely in-state; they often result in simply “poaching” jobs from one jurisdiction to another; and their costs can balloon far beyond what lawmakers anticipated.

The Kansas City border war is a particularly egregious example of many of these problems.  Cutting back on the wasteful use of incentives is the obvious first step that Missouri and Kansas lawmakers should take; the proposed truce would be immediately helpful to both Kansas and Missouri, and in the long run could help more states recognize that there are benefits to ending the tax incentive arms race.

Maryland has made some notable improvements to its tax system these last few years.  In 2012, lawmakers made the state’s regressive tax system (PDF) somewhat less unfair by limiting personal income tax exemptions and raising tax rates on high-income earners.  Then, in 2013, the state increased and overhauled its unsustainable gasoline tax despite the tough politics that accompany any policy that could lead to higher gas prices.

But with a major state election now less than a year away, the conversation seems to be taking a familiar, and less grown-up, tone.  The Baltimore Sun reports that four of the six candidates for governor have already incorporated “crowd-pleasing” tax cuts into their platforms in an effort to woo voters, and that the speaker of the House and president of the Senate appear interested in following their lead.  Corporate income tax cuts have attracted the most attention so far, and the Sun expects that proponents of a corporate tax cut will get a boost from some business leaders when they unveil their legislative priorities next month.

Rather than stand idly by and risk the election becoming a contest to see who can promise the longest list of tax cuts, some advocates in the state have already begun to do the hard work that’s needed to explain to lawmakers, candidates, and voters the ways in which taxes benefit the state.  The goal is to make the election year tradition of demonizing taxes a little less politically rewarding.

One recent example of such work comes from the Maryland Budget and Tax Policy Institute (MBTPI), who spotlights a recent nonpartisan study that found that a corporate income tax cut could actually result in fewer jobs, less disposable income, and/or slower population growth.  More publicity around these kinds of basic facts will be needed if the candidates whose names will appear on Maryland’s (and other states’) ballot next year are going to be convinced that they should drop their familiar refrain about the job-creating power of tax cuts

.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee testified before legislators on the first day of a special session in favor of allowing tax breaks for Boeing that are estimated to cost the state $9 billion. Washington State Budget and Policy Center’s Remy Trupin issued this statement reminding lawmakers “It does not do our state’s economy any good to subsidize Boeing as they ship jobs out of state. We must ensure that significant state investments in Boeing benefit all Washingtonians.” Update: Governor Jay Inslee signed into law  tax breaks for Boeing.
 

There is a promising movement afoot in Minnesota to better fund the state’s transportation needs. The Minnesota Transportation Alliance, in next year’s legislative session, is going to propose either increasing the gas tax or, better yet, reforming it so that it grows alongside gas prices.
 

Here’s some temporary good news: The Illinois Senate adjourned without approving the litany of corporate tax breaks we told you about in an earlier post. So for now at least $88 million will stay in the state’s coffers. But the sponsor of the tax break bill, Sen. Thomas Cullerton says he expects to bring up the bill again next month. The Chicago Tribune is reporting, “even though [Cullerton] is positive he has enough votes to send the … bill to the House, he would like to secure more.”
 

Amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer, managed to score a $7 million subsidy from Wisconsin taxpayers in exchange for building a distribution center in their state.  But as our partner organization, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) explains, these kinds of tax incentives are a zero-sum game that rarely pay off with any real economic benefits.

Ohio’s John Kasich is one Republican governor who wants his state to accept federal dollars from the Affordable Care Act to extend Medicaid to his neediest constituents. Kasich included that money in his budget proposal early this year, but the legislature rejected it.  But then the Governor vetoed the language rejecting those dollars in the budget bill that he finally signed. Enter the Ohio State Controlling Board – a board of six legislators and a policy adviser for the Ohio Office of Budget and Management– whose members then went ahead and voted that the state will follow the Governor’s lead and expand its Medicaid program using the federal funds. But now, six House members are plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the authority of the Board to tap into that federal Medicaid money.

Now it’s up to the courts to decide whether the Controlling Board’s actions were constitutional, but a State Senator who serves on the Board (and who also voted for the expansion) has a very specific idea of how to spend the money. Senator Chris Widener is sponsoring a bill that would turn the savings generated from Medicaid expansion (about $400 million in savings from now through June 2015) into a 4 percent across the board permanent personal income tax rate reduction.

Widener’s plan is doubly irresponsible. First, the Medicaid expansion isn’t a done deal, so the revenue to pay for a tax cut may never materialize. Secondly, legislative staff has estimated the cost of the  proposed tax cut at more than $500 million by the end of the next fiscal year—substantially more than the $404 million Ohio could see from Medicaid expansion. The tax cut Widener proposed would also disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Ohioans. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s (ITEP) analysis of the tax cut proposal in this Policy Matters Ohio (PMO) report found that Ohioans in the top 1 percent of the income spectrum would receive an average state tax cut of $1,437 a year. Middle-income families would get an average of $28, and the poorest twenty percent of Ohioans would see a tax cut averaging $1.

PMO argues that it is inappropriate to discuss tax cuts when the state has so many other unmet needs. Check out PMO’s report, “Use Medicaid savings to improve Ohio, not to give even more tax cuts to the affluent.” It gives a slew of ways in which the expected $400 million in savings could be used more productively, such as hiring police, firemen and teachers and funding preschool programs. Ohio has suffered multiple rounds of tax cuts that have eviscerated state services and local governments; any windfall revenues should be spent trying to undo some of that damage.

Thankfully, the Columbus Dispatch is reporting that the “income-tax cut is getting a cool reception from House GOP leaders.” House Speaker William Batchelder seems to agree with PMO, when he says, “The veterans are not being adequately treated. We have tremendous problems with heroin addiction in this state. We have a lot of problems, and we’d probably look there first … before we do a (tax) cut of that size.”