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Today the Treasury Department released 
“The President’s Framework for Business Tax Reform” outlining the Obama Administration’s ideas for corporate tax reform. Citizens for Tax Justice has been generating research on corporate taxes for over 30 years, most recently with its November, 2011 report, Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers, 2008-2010. In response to the White House and Treasury Department release today, Citizens for Tax Justice Director, Bob McIntyre, issued the following statement:
“The corporate tax reform ‘framework’ released by the Obama administration today fails to raise revenue that could be used to make public investments in America’s economy and America’s future.
“The President has proposed to reduce the statutory corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, make certain temporary tax breaks, including the research and experimentation credit, permanent, and add some new business tax breaks. In total, these tax cuts would cost us about $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years.
“To offset this cost, the President proposed in his fiscal 2013 budget to raise about $0.3 trillion from closing or reducing business tax loopholes. That leaves almost $1 trillion in further business tax reforms that would be necessary for the tax plan to break even, as the President say he wants to do. His ‘framework,’ however, leaves the sources of this $0.9 trillion in offsetting reforms mostly unspecified.
“We can and should collect more tax revenue from corporations. Right now, America’s biggest and most profitable corporations are paying, on average, a ridiculously low amount in federal income taxes, and many of them are paying nothing at all.
“Last year, 250 organizations, including organizations from every state in the U.S., joined us in urging Congress to enact a corporate tax reform that raises revenue. These organizations believe that it’s outrageous that Congress is debating cuts in public services like Medicare and Medicaid to address an alleged budget crisis and yet no attempt will be made to raise more revenue from profitable corporations.
“It’s very disappointing that the President has proposed what is at best ‘revenue-neutral’ corporate tax reform. In 1986, President Reagan and Congress passed a tax reform act that increased corporate tax payments by more than a third. In today’s terms, that would be a corporate tax increase of more than a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. The corporate tax reform that we need today should do no less.”
CTJ has published a fact sheet explaining why corporate tax reform should be revenue-positive and a fact sheet explaining how the international corporate tax rules should be reformed.
Photos of President Obama and Secretary Geithner via Downing Street and World Economic Forum Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0