Problem: Over-taxation is stifling the United States\’ ability to conduct business in the global economy.
Solution: Raise taxes.
If that makes sense to you, you will love the latest initiative by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY)…and supported by President Obama.
Excerpted from an editorial in the Wall Street Journal:
Anyday now the White House and Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) willattempt to raise taxes on business, while making the U.S. tax codeeven more complex. The Obama and Schumer plans to punish businessesfor moving their legal domicile overseas will arrive even as a newinternational ranking shows that the U.S. tax burden on business isclose to the worst in the industrialized world. Way to go,Washington.
OnMonday the Tax Foundation, which manages the widely followed StateBusiness Tax Climate Index, will launch a new global benchmark, theInternational Tax Competitiveness Index. According to the foundation,the new index measures “the extent to which a country\’s taxsystem adheres to two important principles of tax policy:competitiveness and neutrality.”
Acompetitive tax code is one that limits the taxation of businessesand investment. Since capital is mobile and businesses can choosewhere to invest, tax rates that are too high “drive investmentelsewhere, leading to slower economic growth,” as the TaxFoundation puts it.
Theindex takes into account more than 40 tax policy variables. And theinaugural ranking puts the U.S. at 32nd out of 34 industrializedcountries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation andDevelopment (OECD).
Withthe developed world\’s highest corporate tax rate at over 39%including state levies, plus a rare demand that money earned overseasshould be taxed as if it were earned domestically, the U.S. is almostin a class by itself. It ranks just behind Spain and Italy, of alleconomic humiliations. America did beat Portugal and France, which iscurrently run by an avowed socialist.
Thenew ranking is especially timely coming amid the campaign led byMessrs. Obama and Schumer to punish companies that move their legaldomicile overseas to be able to reinvest future profits in the U.S.without paying the punitive American tax rate. If they succeed, theU.S. could fall to dead last on next year\’s ranking. Now there\’s asecond-term legacy project for the President.
Ratherthan erecting an iron tax curtain that keeps U.S. companies fromescaping, the White House and Congress should enact reform thatinvites more businesses to stay or move to the U.S.
Brilliant. Why didn\’t someone think of that befo…..oh, wait. Someone did think of that before. Enough times so that the USA has gotten into this impossible mess.
We all know that saying, “if you\’re digging yourself into a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging”. Yet there is Senator Charles Schumer, fully prepared to do the exact opposite.
Now I understand what President Obama meant when he talked about “shovel-ready jobs”. Because there is Schumer, shovel in hand and backed by Mr. Obama, ready to dig us even deeper into the non-competitive hole.
Unbelievable? No, just the Obama administration and its henchmen at work.
I count the seconds until noontime, January 20, 2017.
