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Obama’s Plan Wisely Makes Job Creation the Priority, But Unwisely Lets Corporations Off the Hook
President Obama has once again proposed to reform business taxes without raising any revenue in the long-term. He has shifted his position slightly, however, by proposing to raise some revenue in the very short-term from businesses in order to fund infrastructure and other investments that would create jobs.
While the President’s focus on job creation is laudable, the fact that he still refuses to call for permanently increasing the amount of revenue generated from the corporate tax is a big disappointment. Over the last three years, CTJ has written reports and op-eds explaining why reform of the corporate income tax (as well as reform of the personal income tax) should raise revenue. CTJ also published reports explaining that profitable corporations pay an effective tax rate that is far lower than the statutory tax rate of 35 percent (which corporate lobbyists want to lower), and many pay no taxes at all.
A letter to members of Congress that was circulated by CTJ in 2011 and signed by organizations in every state explains that, “Some lawmakers have proposed to eliminate corporate tax subsidies and use all of the resulting revenue savings to pay for a reduction in the corporate income tax rate. In contrast, we strongly believe most, if not all, of the revenue saved from eliminating corporate tax subsidies should go towards deficit reduction and towards creating the healthy, educated workforce and sound infrastructure that will make our nation more competitive.”
A similar letter was signed by even more organizations at the end of 2012 before being sent to members of Congress.
President Obama’s Same Old Framework, with One Addition
While speaking today at an Amazon facility in Chattanooga Tennessee, President Obama proposed that Congress enact a business tax reform that closes loopholes, “ends incentives to ship jobs overseas, and lowers rates for businesses that create jobs right here in America,” and also simplifies tax filing for businesses. He also proposed to “use some of the money we save by transitioning to a better tax system to create more good construction jobs” and other types of jobs.
A fact sheet released by the White House explains that the tax reform would be “revenue-neutral” in the long-run, because revenue saved from closing loopholes would go towards offsetting the cost of lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent (and setting the rate even lower, at 25 percent, for domestic manufacturing).
This is entirely in keeping with the “framework” for business tax reform that the President proposed in February of 2012. CTJ criticized the framework for not calling for increased revenue and for failing to explain which loopholes would be closed to offset the costs of the rate reductions.
The one thing that is new, based on the President’s speech in Chattanooga, is his proposal to use a temporary increase in revenue generated from “transitioning to a better tax system” for public investments that create jobs. This new wrinkle is the President’s recognition that some of the tax reforms under consideration will raise money in the short run, but will raise far less after they are fully phased in. The President says this short-term revenue should not be counted in calculating whether tax reform is “revenue-neutral,” but should instead be devoted to his “jobs program.”
Such short-term extra revenues could come from changes that alter the timing of tax payments, like limiting accelerated depreciation so that business must wait longer before they can write off the cost of equipment, or from a transition rule for taxing current offshore corporate profit hoards (at an unspecified tax rate). In speaking about this type of timing shift, Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, told reporters that “That money can’t responsibly be used to lower rates because it doesn’t sustain itself.”
Overall, however, the President continues to ignore what should be an essential result of real tax reform: to make corporations pay their fair share of taxes in order to provide the additional revenues we need to provide the public services and investments that our country needs.