What You Should Know about the RATE Coalition’s Quest for a Lower Corporate Tax Rate

This week, members of Congress will receive a visit from the tax vice presidents of major corporations that have come together in the so-called Reforming America’s Taxes Equitably (RATE) Coalition, a corporate lobbying group pressing lawmakers to reduce the corporate tax rate.

U.S. Corporate Tax Is Actually Lower than What Multinational Corporations Pay Abroad

The first thing you should know about the RATE Coalition is that their rhetoric about the U.S. having a high corporate tax is nonsense. The U.S. statutory corporate income tax rate of 35 percent, which RATE wants to reduce, is not as important as the effective corporate tax rate — the percentage of profits that corporations actually pay in taxes after accounting for all the loopholes and breaks that lower their tax bills.

This is explained in a CTJ report appropriately titled, “The U.S. Has a Low Corporate Tax.” The report also explains that CTJ examined most of the Fortune 500 companies that were consistently profitable from 2008 through 2010 and found that two-thirds of those with significant offshore profits actually paid a higher effective tax rate in the other countries where they did business than they paid in the U.S.

RATE Agrees with CTJ on Closing Tax Loopholes, Disagrees about What To Do with the Savings

The second thing you should know about the RATE Coalition is that they agree with all of the findings of CTJ’s studies documenting corporate tax avoidance due to corporate tax loopholes. They simply disagree with us about what should be done with the revenue savings if Congress ever closes those loopholes.

The RATE Coalition cites CTJ at length in a recent post on its website:

“Because of these reductions [due to corporate tax breaks], the effective tax rate is closer to 18.5 percent on average, according to Washington, D.C. think tank Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), making the rate one of the lowest of any developed country…

A 2011 report on 280 corporations conducted by CTJ found that nearly a third paid no federal income tax in at least one of the three previous years, while 30 of those surveyed recouped more federal dollars than they paid in taxes in one of the previous three years…”

The RATE Coalition’s website admits that “corporate tax base-broadeners [provisions to close corporate tax loopholes] should be on the table.” But they seem to believe that all of the revenue saved from such loophole-closing should be given right back to corporations in the form of a reduction of their corporate income tax rate.

Citizens for Tax Justice has explained (in this fact sheet, for example) that most, if not all, of the revenue savings from closing tax loopholes should be used to fund the public investments that build the American economy and the American middle-class.

CTJ is not alone in holding this position. For example, in May of 2011, U.S. Senators and Representatives received a letter from 250 organizations, including organizations in every state, calling on Congress to close corporate tax loopholes and use the revenue saved to address the budget deficit and fund public investments. The 250 non-profits, consumer groups, labor unions and faith-based groups called for a corporate tax reform that raises revenue. In December of 2012, over 500 organizations from around the country joined a similar letter that was sent to each member of Congress.

Tax-Dodging Corporations like Boeing Extremely Influential in Washington

Despite polling showing that most Americans want our corporations to pay more in taxes and despite the evidence that these companies are not paying very much now, Congress and the administration are taking seriously proponents of a “revenue-neutral” reform of the corporate income tax.

Lawmakers of both parties and even President Obama have shown an alarming level of deference to these companies.

For example, CTJ’s figures show that Boeing, one of the corporations that is a member of the RATE Coalition, paid nothing in net federal income taxes from 2002 through 2011, despite $32 billion in pre-tax U.S. profits. In fact, Boeing has actually reported more than $2 billion in negative total federal taxes over that period.

Amazingly, this did not stop President Obama from telling a crowd at a Boeing plant in Washington State that revenue saved from closing offshore tax loopholes “should go towards lowering taxes for companies like Boeing that choose to stay and hire here in the United States of America.”

President Obama has also signed onto the overall goal of the RATE Coalition, a “revenue-neutral” reform of the corporate tax, which CTJ has criticized in detail.

It’s hard to know how much longer members of Congress and the President can ignore the opinions of the majority of Americans who want corporations to pay more in taxes. Perhaps as more people feel the effects of the sequester and other service cuts supposedly necessary to balance they budget, the more they’ll demand to know why their elected leaders are allowing so much corporate tax revenue to go uncollected.