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It’s pretty evident that state corporate income taxes are especially flawed and riddled with loopholes. But, of course, that doesn’t have to be the case. In fact, there are lots of things that legislators can do (given the political will) to strengthen their corporate income taxes, including enacting combined reporting, increasing corporate tax disclosure, and closing selected loopholes.
Despite all these options to strengthen the corporate tax, lawmakers from coast to coast are doing their best to undermine this inherently progressive tax. This seems especially sort-sighted given the revenue needs of many states.
Here are some recent bad ideas regarding state corporate income taxes:
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s budget outline includes a proposal that would phase out the state’s corporate income tax over four years.
Florida Governor Rick Scott has proposed reducing the corporate income tax rate from 5.5 to 3 percent.
Indiana’s Senate is considering a bill to reduce the state’s corporate income tax by 20 percent. This bill recently passed the Senate Committee on Tax and Fiscal Policy.
Iowa Governor Terry Branstad has said that he would like to cut Iowa’s corporate income tax in half, despite evidence that this tax change would only benefit large corporations.
Recently, bills have been dropped in the both the Kansas House of Representatives and the Senate which would phase out the state’s corporate income tax altogether.
North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue is proposing that the corporate income tax rate be reduced to 4.9 percent from 6.9 percent.
Instead of slashing or completely eliminating the state corporate income tax, lawmakers should be working to strengthen this revenue source.