Author Topic: To Keep Corporations Here, Why Not Cut Their Taxes? By ROBERT J. SAMUELSON  (Read 432 times)

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Offline mystery-ak

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http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-on-the-left/072314-710053-tax-inversions-are-sign-that-us-corporate-taxes-are-too-high.htm?p=full


http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-on-the-left/072314-710053-tax-inversions-are-sign-that-us-corporate-taxes-are-too-high.htm?p=full

To Keep Corporations Here, Why Not Cut Their Taxes?

By ROBERT J. SAMUELSON
 Posted 05:32 PM ET

Corporate America's latest public-relations disaster comes under the banner "tax inversion," where a U.S. company shifts its legal headquarters to a country with a lower tax rate.

Just last week, U.S. drugmaker AbbVie agreed to buy a foreign firm, Shire PLC, in part to reduce its corporate tax rate, which is expected to drop from 22% to 13%. In most inversions, companies keep their headquarters' physical activities — the people, the buildings — in the U.S., as would AbbVie. Still, the practice has understandably provoked a furious backlash.

These companies "have deserted our country to avoid paying taxes but expect to keep receiving the full benefits that being American confers," fumes Fortune magazine writer Allan Sloan in the Washington Post. The tax flight "turns my stomach."

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew accuses these companies of lacking economic "patriotism." Millions of Americans probably feel the same way. I certainly do. But we need to balance this revulsion with some stubborn — and not well-understood — realities.

First, the issue is easy to hype. Companies that shift their legal status abroad will still pay American corporate taxes, based on profits earned in the U.S., which for most U.S. multinational firms is still the largest market.

What's mainly at issue is taxes on foreign profits. Even here, it's easy to exaggerate. For example, the White House proposal to curb inversions would save $19.5 billion in taxes from 2015 to 2024, reckons the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. That's less than 1% of estimated corporate taxes over the same period.

Second, corporate taxes had declined significantly as a source of federal revenue long before inversions. In 1950, they were 26.5% of the total. Now, the share bounces between 10% and 12%. The slide has many causes.

Higher Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes have reduced other taxes' share. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 also squeezed corporate taxes by discouraging smaller firms from organizing as traditional corporations.

Before the 1986 law, the top personal tax rate (50%) exceeded the top corporate rate (46%). After the law, the personal tax rate was lower.

Many firms reacted by organizing as "pass through" entities (example: subchapter S corporations) whose profits are taxed as individual income. "More business income showed up as personal income," says economist Kimberly Clausing of Reed College.

Third, U.S. multinationals are doing more business abroad — a trend likely to continue because many foreign markets outpace America's. From 1970 to 2013, the share of U.S. profits earned abroad rose from 8% to 20%.

Under U.S. law, American firms receive a credit on foreign taxes paid and pay the U.S. corporate tax only when the remaining profits are repatriated to the United States. Not surprisingly, U.S. companies hoard foreign profits abroad. The stash now is about $2 trillion, estimates Citizens for Tax Justice, a left-leaning advocacy group.

There's an obvious dilemma. Facing chronic budget deficits, the U.S. can't afford to lose tax revenues. But high U.S. taxes encourage American firms to locate activities abroad or to manipulate business practices to concentrate profits in low-tax countries. "Tax departments are considered profit centers," says Clausing.

One common tactic: Firms sell patents to subsidiaries in low-tax countries to reduce the tax bite on royalty payments. The top U.S. corporate tax rate (35%) is already the highest among major nations. Also, the U.S. is the only advanced nation that taxes profits earned abroad.

An "inversion" lets firms take advantage of lower foreign taxes and move profits to the U.S. without paying the 35% tax. (The tax doesn't apply to the non-U.S. profits of a foreign firm.)

The administration would frustrate inversions by requiring that, after a U.S. company bought a foreign firm, at least 50% of the surviving firm's stock would be foreign-owned. Otherwise, the firm would be considered American for tax purposes. The high level of required foreign ownership would probably deter some inversions.

But the Peterson Institute's Gary Hufbauer argues this would have perverse results. By frustrating inversions now, it would relieve pressure for a more sweeping corporate tax overhaul to improve U.S. multinationals' global competitiveness, he contends.

Hufbauer would cut the corporate rate to about 20%, end the taxation of foreign profits (the practice of most countries) and recoup lost revenues by raising individual taxes on corporate dividends and capital gains.

I favor this approach. Let's lower taxes on corporations that can move from the U.S.; let's raise taxes on the people who own their stock. The odds against this are long, but it would be a true act of economic patriotism.
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There's actually one possibility that might alleviate - or at least frustrate - a lot of the silliness (assuming arguendo that international tax planning is silliness):  permit, or even require, consolidated tax returns for US corporations, whether the corporation is a parent or a subsidiary.  The only novelty would be the provision that if the parent corporation is a foreign entity, then the sections of the IRC governing the taxation of foreign corporations - particularly the income-sourcing provisions - would apply to the consolidated return; if the parent corporation is a US entity, then consolidation would bring all of the worldwide income into the US tax base for the tax year in which earned/accrued, with foreign tax credits (or deductions for foreign taxes paid/accrued) being taken in the same tax year in which those foreign taxes were paid/accrued.

Offline truth_seeker

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There's actually one possibility that might alleviate - or at least frustrate - a lot of the silliness (assuming arguendo that international tax planning is silliness):  permit, or even require, consolidated tax returns for US corporations, whether the corporation is a parent or a subsidiary.  The only novelty would be the provision that if the parent corporation is a foreign entity, then the sections of the IRC governing the taxation of foreign corporations - particularly the income-sourcing provisions - would apply to the consolidated return; if the parent corporation is a US entity, then consolidation would bring all of the worldwide income into the US tax base for the tax year in which earned/accrued, with foreign tax credits (or deductions for foreign taxes paid/accrued) being taken in the same tax year in which those foreign taxes were paid/accrued.
So you would compel every foreign corporation doing business in the US to file a consolidated return? Daimler Benz, BMW, Fiat, VW Group, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai, Volvo etc..?

Likewise British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, etc.  H & M clothing retailer? Ikea retailer home goods?

Not going to happen.  The US is almost alone, trying to tax foreign source income, period.

Lower US corporate rates, and that will stop the firms from wanting to go elsewhere.

The companies, their CPAs and attorneys will find "workarounds" for the laws because loopholes are almost built in, by design and intent.
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Offline PzLdr

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Why not cut their taxes? Because then you have less money to buy the votes you think you need.
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