We retired Tax Justice Blog in April 2017. For new content on issues related to tax justice, go to www.justtaxesblog.org
by CTJ Director, Robert McIntyre
In a speech at the National Press Club on October 9, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) joined with President Obama in calling for revenue-raising tax reform, by closing loopholes and reversing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, to help address our nation’s long-term deficit problem.
“We must reduce the deficit, which is strangling our economic growth,” Schumer said. “And we must seek to control the rise in income inequality, which is hollowing out the middle class.”
Schumer added: “It would be a huge mistake to take the dollars we gain from closing loopholes and put them into reducing rates for the highest income brackets, rather than into reducing the deficit.”
Specifically, Sen. Schumer called for restoring the top personal income tax rate on top earners to the Clinton-era 39.6 percent and “reducing but not eliminating” the current huge gap between the extremely low tax rates on high-income investors and the much higher tax rates on working people.
So far pretty doggone good. But then Sen. Schumer stumbles. Here’s what he says about corporate (and other business) taxes:
“Some on the left have suggested corporate tax reform could be a source for new revenue, but I disagree. To preserve our international competitiveness, it is imperative that we seek to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent and do it on a revenue-neutral basis.”
Oops! Despite the fact that U.S. corporate income taxes are almost the lowest in the developed world (PDF) as a share of the economy, Schumer seems to think that the amount we now collect in corporate income taxes is just about perfect. That’s simply ridiculous.
For one thing, the kind of “tax reform” that big corporations and their allies in Congress are promoting would be perverse. Their central goal is to eliminate U.S. taxes on corporations’ foreign profits. Of course, to keep their promise to break even, their version of “tax reform” would have to increase U.S. taxes on profits earned here in the United States.
One could point out that the U.S. already collects almost nothing in taxes on American corporations’ foreign profits. But corporate leaders would like to convert our current indefinite “deferral” of taxes on foreign profits into a permanent exemption.
Why would anyone think this approach would help our “international competitiveness”? Well, you have to understand what corporate leaders mean by that term. They don’t mean making it more attractive to invest and create jobs in the United States. Quite the contrary. They mean making it more attractive for companies to invest and create jobs in foreign countries.
Real corporate tax reform would do the opposite, by ending the indefinite deferral (PDF) of tax on foreign profits. Companies may still invest abroad for economic reasons, but at least we wouldn’t be subsidizing them to do so.
There’s a second point. Due to a plethora of tax subsidies, we also have very low taxes on corporate profits earned in the United States. And a fat lot of good that’s done us economically. So we should be increasing corporate taxes on U.S. profits, too. Not on all companies, to be sure. But on average, Fortune 500 corporations now pay only about half the official 35 percent corporate tax rate on their U.S. profits. A quarter of these giant corporations now pay less than 10 percent in U.S. taxes on their U.S. profits, including many that pay nothing at all.
Closing the loopholes that allow such rampant domestic corporate tax avoidance, including curbing loopholes that allow companies to artificially shift their U.S. profits into foreign tax havens, should be a key part of a balanced deficit reduction strategy. By doing so, we can not only help get deficits under control, we can also afford to make the investments in education and infrastructure that will really make investing and creating jobs in the United States more likely.
So Sen. Schumer, congratulations on pointing out the need for more revenue from wealthy individuals. Now, if you can just appreciate the equally important need to get more revenues from America’s tax-avoiding corporations, well, you’ll be a real tax reform hero for our time.