In public, top Hillary Clinton surrogate Neera Tanden said at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia that there’s no need to cut the federal corporate tax rate from its current 35 percent.
But in private, Clinton says something quite different to corporations and trade groups.
An 80-page report compiled by Clinton’s own campaign of potentially damaging remarks she made behind closed doors was published by Wikileaks on Friday. It includes extensive comments on tax policy.
During an October 13, 2014, speech to the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers, Clinton told the audience that “A number of business leaders have been talking to my husband and me about an idea that would allow the repatriation of the couple trillion dollars that are out there. And you would get a lower rate — a really low rate — if you were willing to invest a percentage in an infrastructure bank.”
Clinton has repeatedly called for increased spending on U.S. infrastructure, but has never specified where the needed revenue would come from.
In a speech the previous month to the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, Clinton also said that a lower rate for all corporate profits regardless of where they are earned “certainly could be on the table” as long as that was “part of a broader package.” However, she specified that “if all you do is lower the rates” that “there’s a price to pay” in terms of lower tax revenue.
American multinational corporations are currently stashing a staggering $2.4 trillion in profits — about 14 percent of the size of the entire U.S. economy — overseas. Multinationals are required by U.S. law to pay the statutory 35 percent tax on profits they earn anywhere on earth, but the tax is not assessed until the profits are brought back to the U.S.
This has allowed Corporate America to essentially hold U.S. tax revenue hostage, refusing to pay its taxes until Americans become so desperate that they will cut a deal giving multinationals a special new tax rate.
This strategy has already paid off once, in 2004, when multinationals got Congress to let them bring back $312 billion in profits at a one-time rate of about 5 percent. The legislation required that the cash be used to hire Americans or conduct research and development. Corporations ignored these provisions and instead used the money to enrich their executives and stockholders, while cutting U.S. jobs.
Both Hillary and Bill Clinton clearly envision cutting a similar deal during a Hillary Clinton presidency, although presumably they intend for the corporations to keep their part of the bargain this time.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton delivers a speech during the annual Clinton Global Initiative on September 21, 2016 in New York.
Photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
Just last month, Bill Clinton told the audience at a Clinton Foundation Event that the corporate tax rate “should be lowered” with “X percent of [repatriated profits], whatever percent, [going] into buying investments in the national infrastructure program.” Clinton added, “This is just me now, I’m not speaking for …” and then trailed off.
Hillary Clinton said the same thing during a private August 2014 speech to the software storage company Nexenta: “I would like to find a way to repatriate the overseas earnings and I’ve read a really interesting proposal. … John Chambers and others … basically have said they would be willing to invest a percentage of their repatriated profits in an infrastructure bank … I thought that was a really intriguing idea.”
Chambers was the CEO of Cisco at the time, and a vociferous proponent of corporations refusing to bring their profits home until they receive such a sweetheart deal.
Donald Trump has a similar plan to slash corporate tax rates to 15 percent (with a special rate for repatriated profits of 10 percent) although without requirements for corporations to participate in funding an infrastructure bank.
Top photo: Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton in Las Vegas in February.
It’s not ideal, but giving them an incentive to invest the money back in the US at a lower tax rate is better than the status quo of them harboring the money abroad outside the jurisdiction of US authorities.
Look up the corporate tax rate in Sweden and spare me the faux outrage.
Any time someone like Robert Wolf starts pushing an “infrastructure bank” the Spidey senses perk up. Wolf Ran UBS. UBS has a history of violating the law. Helping wealthy Americans hide money and repatriating that money is going on as we speak. He was a big Obama donor. He’s a big Clinton donor. His new firm is an “Advisory” firm focused on infrastructure. His “infrastructure guru” is this guy.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-likosky-0aab2a5
who wrote this book
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/law-infrastructure-and-human-rights-michael-b-likosky/1103025655
Some of the “other books purchased” with his:
“Civilising Globalisation”, “Viable Utopian ideas”, and “Social Movements for Global Democracy”
Lidosky also helped Gov Brown “modernize” its infrastructure bank.
I’m all for going after BOTH corporate and individual money hidden in onshore as well as offshore shells. There is no political will to do it. The Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act has failed to pass Congress since 2007.
As I told Dave Dayen in the Penny Stock Chronicles: money transcends politics.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2012/08/investigating-mitt-romney-offshore-accounts
“politics” doesn’t make strange bedfellows. MONEY makes strange bedfellows.
This is a story that has me intrigued. Anytime I see someone like Robert Wolf pushing an “infrastructure bank” the Spidey senses go crazy. Wolf ran Equities at UBS during the period covered in the UBS cross border DPA. He’s been a big fundraiser for both Obama and Clinton. Now, he runs an advisory firm pushing “infrastructure spending” in a big way. The “infrastructure guru” at his firm is this guy
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-likosky-0aab2a5
who wrote this book
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/law-infrastructure-and-human-rights-michael-b-likosky/1103025655
some very interesting “other books purchased” listed:
“Viable Utopian ideas”, “Civilising Globalisation”, “Social Movements for Global Democracy”
Lidosky sits/sat on the Clinton Global Initiative and advised Gov Brown on “Modernizing California’s Infrastructure bank”
The Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act has failed to pass Congress since 2007 . There is a lot of money being hidden by both corporations and wealthy individuals in offshore and onshore shells. Going after corporations during an election year is low hanging fruit. Going after individuals is proving a more daunting task. Just ask Stiglitz and Pieth. Believe me, I support cracking down on both.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2012/08/investigating-mitt-romney-offshore-accounts
It’s not difficult to play the numbers out. Thirty-five percent of 2.4 trillion is 850 billion dollars in taxes. That’s not astounding, it’s flat out lunacy. That’s a million dollars 850,000 times over, or $850,000 million dollars.
If Clinton offers the same giveaway of 5 percent it will result in a tax loss of 730 billion dollars.
How else will you get the money home? Should we send in the brown shirts with guns and force them to pay 30% into some govt slush fund like some third world hellhole?
The fact is, FATCA did nothing but hurt US professionals abroad who can’t even get a savings account in their host country, while Soros continues to ripoff his host and home country.
The only way to get this done is to entice them to bring it back and then pass laws to make sure it never happens again.
Your assertions are ridiculous. The taxes owed could be taken from any US holdings legally. They just aren’t while “our” government pretends it’s hands are tied.
Again, you sound like a nazi. You cannot force a corporation to pay an amount of tax on assumptions. How are you going to get X US Holdings to disclose how much they have in X Singapore Holdings by threats without them shutting down In the US completely? It’s now cheaper and smarter to treat the US like a third world market for many companies. Labor and tax structures better overseas now so quite easy to threaten Fed and local governments of a pull out.
I’m glad I never voted for a Clinton for any office.
Define LIE– public and private policy.
CrookdClinton have certainly ruined the US. Taught PrespzeudO this and that exactly what he has done!
SenSanders will do nothing.
No one can tell FPotusa NO.
Clintonemail.com to talk to criminals.
American multinational corporations are currently stashing a staggering $2.4 trillion in profits — about 14 percent of the size of the entire U.S. economy — overseas.
Meanwhile I’m in the hospital again waiting for Social Services to free a phone line up so I can work somewhere while I live at a homeless shelter.
although presumably they intend for the corporations to keep their part of the bargain this time.
Why would anyone presume they are telling the truth about that bit? Especially since everyone they are speaking to about this on the down-low knows well the previous history.
Unless they produce actual penalties for breaking those rules and legislate on it my presumption would be that those lines are the cover story that will be used to sell it to an American populace too exhausted and propagandized to remember what happened the last time this particular sales job was pitched.
Sounds to me like a grab for government, aka the people’s, assets.
Wait a minute. Banks use fractional lending at something like 9 to 1. Meaning that if the bank holds $1 million in assets then they can lend out $9 million. On 5 year business loans that would be a whopping profit, not to mention the interest. That is why banking is such a money maker. Now my numbers are very ruff and off a bit but this is the basis of how our bank lending system works.
So now she wants to give the corporations a HUGH tax break and let them essentially start a bank so they can make even BIGGER profits on that money.
The money in the “infrastructure” bank will come full circle back to the corporations in the form of government funding for R&D and the like. I don’t see any scenario in which these corporations agree to a bank that funds projects unrelated to their businesses such as our crumbling roads, bridges, dams etc. Although there is a chance that it could fund internet infrastructure once the ISP monopolists have signed off on a plan that doesn’t affect or strengthens their stranglehold.
Infrastructure Bank
This idea is conceptually no different than the ear-marking process of legislative activities.
Who will be in charge of the bank? Who will decide how and where funds will be spent?
This sounds like a presidential grab of congressional powers of the Government checkbook to me. Again, we see the office of the executive attempting to over reach their authority and concentrate more power into the office of the executive branch.
Congress doesn’t need any vehicle to spend funds on infrastructure. They can appropriate and spend as they see fit.
This idea only ensures one thing: funds will not be spent on Heathcare, education or other social programs that desperately need tax dollars.
Truth is some folks will never do anything unless they are forced to do it under the treat of extreme consequences. We are a nation of laws, I got it, but law breakers are not just low income hoodlums. The white color loopholes that the CEO class have had in this country by buying the political class has got to end. Of course they will fight it but will they fight it with their lives or entire wealth? No. This may sounds harsh but some of these folks need to be told simply that if they want to keep their money overseas they can but their products and their asses are never allowed on our soil. Period. Their assets here will be seized and their citizenship stripped. There is no room or time for these globalist self interested parasites holding the national good hostage. Yeah yeah that sounds like what dictators do but we are being bent over left and right here and it is about time someone get a handle on this and clean house.
This is nothing more than a bunch of successful crooks getting together and using their monetarily gained power to ensure their continued success. They have gained political power by using their wealth to game the system. Now that they are inside the system they can continue to manipulate it to their financial and power ends. This type of skulduggery has been going on since man invented money. I am surprised that so called modern folks cannot see history when it slaps them in the face!
R.I.C.O.
passes available at extra cost.
You folks at the intercept are heroes.
Where and who are the authors of that earlier great piece of legislation?
Guess accountability is just for the other taxpayers.
I’m starting to get angry…
Great article. Thank you and thanks to Wikileaks.
A sweetheart deal for the multinationals to repatriate their earning is a great idea…..if you’re trying to serve multinational corporation executives. If you wanted to serve the greater American public there’s a much simpler solution: Repatriate 80% of the earnings currently held abroad by the end of the fiscal year or our government will no longer enforce any patents held by your company.
What right does the US government have to force corporations to repatriate and be taxed on income earned entirely abroad, outside its tax jurisdiction? Other countries don’t do this and neither should the US. Multinationals should be paying taxes on earnings to the country in which they were operating… which is what they do.
What right? How about the law of the land?
Nope, sorry, the law is that US corporations operating overseas must pay US tax only on profits that are brought back into the USA.
Simple answer, although many generations of propaganda and brainwashing will make it hard for many to comprehend:
Corporations (and other entities) are permitted to exist and do business in our communities only to the extent that we, collectively, decide that it is beneficial to those communities to allow it. And we establish rules and conditions we require those entities to follow and meet.
Don’t want to comply? No problem. Take your business to another jurisdiction and rely upon their government benefits and protections (such as they may be) and sell your products or services where they permit. Not here.
There is no gods-given right to do business or maximize profit. Those depend entirely upon the consent of the communities that create the environments that make the activities possible.
That’s exactly what many US corporations have done. They’ve taken their business to another jurisdiction – it’s called an Inversion. And businesses are reviled for doing this.
Businesses should be taxed in the countries where they are operating and making their money. Just as people should be taxed in the countries where they are operating and making their money. The US alone taxes people simply on the basis of their US citizenship even if they have never set foot in the US. And it does the same for businesses incorporated in the US. It’s wrong and is actually harmful to the US in the longrun.
None of that is responsive and all of it consists of opinion — the opinions of one who accepts and believes in the capitalist model. I don’t accept it, so the opinions are irrelevant to me.
Above you asked “what right” the US has to enforce tax rules on corporations domiciled in and/or doing business in the US. I explained it to you in very simple terms.
Anyway, nothing is more harmful than a system based upon endless growth. And nothing is more incompatible with sustainable civilization. We’re going to face that reality, one way or another, likely sooner rather than later. We aren’t smart enough — and we’re too arrogant and optimistic — to face it voluntarily and effect fundamental change, so that change will be forced upon us. It won’t be pretty.
Yawn. Don’t accuse me of believing in the capitalist model. You’re spouting the party line, the line of the vast majority of Americans believe what you say. The majority of politicians spout the same line too. That’s fine.
My reply just agreed with you: “Take your business to another jurisdiction and rely upon their government benefits and protections (such as they may be) and sell your products or services where they permit. Not here.”
We are in perfect agreement. If businesses want to operate in the US then they should pay US tax. If they don’t want to operate in the US then they shouldn’t .
“Anyway, nothing is more harmful than a system based upon endless growth. And nothing is more incompatible with sustainable civilization. We’re going to face that reality, one way or another, likely sooner rather than later.”
Bingo on the above remark. Capitalists must accept and focus away from consumption to a creative conservation for profit economy. For example a zero house like hand built early automobiles is now priced out of reach $300k. Henry Ford would have mass produced for 100K. The Government would need to put such high technology homes under a Federal building code to prevent local “vested interests from blocking building. Profit is made for the right cause, those that embrace this market profit, short sighted vested interests change or are creatively destroyed.
Hillary Clinton is the poster child for shortsighted vested interests.
Website ZeroHouse
http://zerohouse.net/wordpress/
Considering that most multinationals have shopped for the lowest tax jurisdiction they can find to house their HQs, they aren’t paying taxes in the countries they are selling any products in. There are several ways they get away with this and groups like the Tax Justice Network have covered it in detail. The biggest recipient of all the digital zeros are the crown dependencies of the UK, as well as their other off shore territories. So it seems the U.S. has issued corporate charters to a bunch of multinationals who effectively keep all their money stashed in the banks of the very nation she fought a war of independence against. Long live the bitch on her throne. By the way, if you don’t like paying your taxes then get the fuk off the internet, because it was my tax payer money that helped fund DARPA, not yours you p.o.s.
;^)
Why are you talking about whether or not I like paying taxes? As it happens, I like paying taxes just fine.
But I wasn’t crazy about paying US taxes when I lived in a European country for 35 years, never set foot in the US and was already paying 40% taxes to my country of residence. I’m glad you think the US has the right to tax people and corporations around the world wherever they reside. Glenn Greenwald hasn’t lived in the USA for a number of years now – I wonder how he feels about it.
I don’t know the conditions under which you were born, i.e. military, diplomatic family, etc. so obviously I cannot speak to that. However, if as an adult you continued to maintain your U.S. citizenship then that was your choice. Don’t bitch about having had to pay taxes to a place you never set foot in when the solution was right in front of you for many years.
As for corporations, any nation with tax laws has a right to tax any of them that does business within its borders. Period. Quite frankly I think the U.S. should revoke the charters of any corporation that is convicted of a felony. They want to be treated like individuals for the purposes that benefit them, but threaten everyone that they’re going to take their business elsewhere if we don’t succumb to their demands. Fuk ’em. Let them go, I say. Why do they get to pay next to nothing in fees whenever they commit a crime but an individual can get locked up for a joint? How do they continue to get away with forced arbitration that effectively strips citizens of their constitutional rights when having been wronged by them? http://www.afj.org/our-work/issues/eliminating-forced-arbitration Many multinationals have become criminal enterprises that prey on everyone they come into contact with, including their own employees. So why should any nation bow down and give these entities anything they want? We grant their right to exist, we can revoke it just as easily.
I can’t afford to get rid of US citizenship. You have to pay to get rid of US citizenship. It costs $2,350 . So for my family of 5 I’m looking at around $12,000 which I don’t have. Plus the services of a tax lawyer which would be another $5000. Plus, plus, plus. What was the solution you had in mind for me that was “right in front of me for many years”?
And I’m all for your recommendation on corporations: “any nation with tax laws has a right to tax any of them that does business within its borders. Period.” Glad we agree.
Did you always have a family of 5? Did you earn no money before you had a family of 5? Unless you have only ever spent money on food, clothing, and shelter, you could’ve saved enough to do it. In fact, knowing that you would continue to pay taxes as long as you maintained U.S. citizenship should have been motivation enough to save enough to afford revoking it. Good luck doing it now.
You don’t have to pay a cent to give up your citizenship. All you have to do is to take an oath to another country declaring you will support them over the US. Publicly declare that fact and your citizenship can be stripped by US law.
Sorry, but that is not true. It sounds good, and it has been true in the past. But it is not true today.
“But I wasn’t crazy about paying US taxes when I lived in a European country for 35 years, never set foot in the US and was already paying 40% taxes to my country of residence.”
You obviously have never read the tax code. When the income tax was first put in it was specifically for taxing the income of non-residence US citizens.
“If you are a U.S. citizen or resident alien, the rules for filing income, estate, and gift tax returns and paying estimated tax are generally the same whether you are in the United States or abroad. Your worldwide income is subject to U.S. income tax, regardless of where you reside.”
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/u-s-citizens-and-resident-aliens-abroad
If individuals are subject to this tax policy so should corporations.
Naaa, I’ve read it. I’m complaining about it being immoral. “Obviously.”
You think it’s just and proper that someone whom the US deems to be a US citizen (or who at some point had a green card), who lives their life outside the US, who may have inherited US citizenship and never set foot in the US — should have to pay US tax on their worldwide income? Really? I’m sure you know the US is the only country that does this, other than Eritrea.
star let me lay this out for you.
What is the ‘Double Irish With A Dutch Sandwich’
The double Irish with a Dutch sandwich is a tax avoidance technique employed by certain large corporations, involving the use of a combination of Irish and Dutch subsidiary companies to shift profits to low or no tax jurisdictions. The double Irish with a Dutch sandwich technique involves sending profits first through one Irish company, then to a Dutch company and finally to a second Irish company headquartered in a tax haven. This technique has allowed certain corporations to reduce their overall corporate tax rates dramatically.
Although much of this money was earned in the US it is paid to a Ireland company (PO Box) and then it is not US earning anymore.
This is loophole that needs to be closed. The US could make a simple change to the tax code and collect this tax no matter where it is.
@DougSalzmann – Actually, that’s exactly what companies do. Imagine when John Deere sells a sugar cane harvester in Brazil that was designed in Brazil and Germany, and assembled in Brazil with parts made in India, China, Germany and the US. The US company pays taxes on the parts produced in the US. The John Deere subsidiary in Brazil pays taxes in Brazil, and does as you say: it relies on Brazil’s “government benefits and protections (such as they may be) and sell [its] products or services where [Brazil] permits.” The question for you, is why on earth would it be rational or fair for the US to collect tax what is done exclusively in Brazil?
Take another example, and let’s turn the scenario around. Chrysler has always paid US taxes on Chrysler’s operations in the US. Fiat bought Chrysler. Do you think Italy should now collect tax on the sales of Chryslers in the US? Because that’s what you are advocating.
Reading comprehension is fundamental. Work on it.
When you get better, you won’t have to waste so many words arguing against imagined positions.
The trouble is no one in any duristiction is paying their taxes. Except low earners and the middle class who’ve seen their incomes stagnate for decades
Heck. I would stop enforcing patents immediately. No threat. Just do it. Legal torture. If i didnt get ‘what i wanted’ i would put liens on all their property. Then, if i didn’t get what i want, i would lock their doors for non-payment of tax.
that’s how you win.
Neither corporations nor the Clintons can be trusted, and lowering corporate tax rates is obscenely stupid.
This is a very good idea. Why should US corporations pay US tax on earnings from business they do outside the US, when they will already have been taxed on those earnings by the country where they were earned? Of course they don’t want to repatriate the earnings to the US and be taxed a second time. Bear in mind, Apple (etc) already pays the IRS full tax on all the profits it makes in the US.
This proposal is good: it encourages corporations to bring profits to the US where they’ll be taxed at a low level and the tax go directly to infrastructure projects. No reason for Clinton to be shy about it or for Jon Schwarz to crow.
I appreciate The Intercept finally exposing Hellary for what she is, a grifter that should have long ago been in jail.
GITMO is still open. Let’s put Hellary, 0Bama, W, Bill, and all their et al associates in those cages.
Make America Great Again!
No, Gitmo needs to close and indefinite detention needs to end. Bush and Cheney and Obama and Clinton deserve to be prosecuted for war crimes, certainly. The real power is in the Military-industrial complex, and in point of fact the most powerful and corrupt people in the world are not household names at all but people like former NSA director Keith Alexander.
I realize you’re being flippant, but Gitmo really is an American shame, embodying years of torture not just under Bush but in the force-feedings greenlighted by Obama – who never proposed ending illegal detention.
Indeed. That’s why I suggest executive and legislative wings at ADMAX Florence or FMC Carswell (for the females).
Reason #527 I will not be voting for Hillary Clinton.
Clinton also pitched repatriation as a possible way to fund her proposed infrastructure bank during her April 2016 interview with the Daily News. http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/transcript-hillary-clinton-meets-news-editorial-board-article-1.2596292
Is it not a good idea to bait large companies and corporations into repatriation of their overseas cash? I get the bigger picture issue regarding Clinton’s relationship with banks and firms (so don’t eat me alive) but this seems like a reasonable solution.
It must be somewhat painful for Clintonoids to be reporting on these quoted proofs that the Red Queen is a lying two faced grifter but almost no one else in the media is even mentioning them so it’s probably safe to walk on the wild side.
It’s hard to imagine today but not that long ago this type of damning revelations would have destroyed support for a candidate who proudly spoke these words spitting on the people she claims to represent especially because they were meant only for private consumption.
In the Bizzaro World we now inhabit this kind of inconvenient information is merely spun as untrustworthy foreign interference in our sacred if corrupt election system
You’re looking at the wrong media, there’s plenty of coverage of this kind of behavior elsewhere:
You’ll get more details from random bloggers than from media outlets, too:
https://christinepriddy.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/a-bust-on-americas-corporate-offshore-tax-avoidance/
The others on the list are General Electric, Chevron, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Valero, ConocoPhillips, Citigroup, etc.
Their top shareholders include Wall Street’s big funds: Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street, Fidelity, Berkshire-Hathaway, etc, etc. Top investors in Pierre Omidyar’s EBay, too!
Ha, maybe the Intercept can write an article about EBay offshore tax avoidance schemes, snicker. Here’s a sample:
Ha ha ha ha! Now we see why Omidyar’s backing Clinton! What, not an acceptable subject for the independent hard-hitting adversarial Intercept? How’s that brand image holding up these days? Snarfle snarfle LOL
I was referring to the US MSM where most people still get their news. The AP has bucked the silence trend and has been reporting this as news not anti-Russian paranoia.
Greedy multinationals operate outside and are loyal to no State only themselves so the only option is to entice them with benefits for bringing their profits into the US.
Clinton’s infrastructure bank is another grand political scheme that only promises fresh roads and bridges for the Chinese to use to deliver their consumer goods to the economically depressed rubes. It also may make it easier for them to continuing to mine our post industrial wasteland for scrap metal and other recyclables.
A multi million dollar road widening, paving and curbing project is nearing competition in my small town where the Great Recession has shut down a number of our local manufactures and supply businesses. This improved road will serve the new discount liquor store and Tractor Supply that have opened but little else.
Actually, reading this article, it seems they learned a lesson from the last time multinationals were given a holiday: as is pointed out, those companies promised to invest in the US – and then didn’t, enriching only themselves. By, instead, insisting that they actually write a check and put it into an Infrastructure Bank, they wouldn’t be faking it. It’s an interesting proposal.
Agree. It’s a promising proposal.
No, it really isn’t interesting because those that apply for assistance from this new entity would financially benefit many of those multinationals. In essence it would create an on-shore safe haven for all that repatriated money to flow through. They won’t pay anywhere near 5% to deposit it in that bank unless they can be certain that bank somehow benefits them when it comes time to draw on it. The tax payers will once again foot the bill for establishing the bank and paying salaries to those running it, who of course will come directly from the multinationals and/or financial industry. The neolibs and neocons need to go, sooner rather than later.
Corporations…booga-booga…American Corporation pay the highest tax rates in the world. I love it when Clinton speaks the truth even though doctrinaire Progressives are unhappy.
American corporations have the highest NOMINAL tax rate but the EFFECTIVE rate is much lower. I think it’s around 10% with the large corporations (GE, etc) having an effective tax rate of zero.
I like the article but, I believe I have some insight you might find interesting. Email me if you’re interested.
Interestingly enough, CNBC has run an article recently that described a very similar proposal being raised to Congress. I’m curious to see whether corporate-friendly media will continue to float this in hope’s generating public interest and acceptance.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/05/standard-and-poors-plan-brings-25-trillion-dollars-in-overseas-corporate-cash-home-for-repatriation-and-creates-jobs.html
It’s a sweetheart deal, to be sure, for corporations. The CNBC article actually specifies that the required 15% of repatriated funds for investment into the infrastructure bank would actually be in the form of bond purchases, thereby guaranteeing that these corporations not only get a tax holiday on 100% of $2.5T, but also are guaranteed a profit on 15% of it via some inflated interest rate which they are certainly not earning while holding their funds in Ireland or elsewhere.
I think the spin is interesting. The entire article goes into the multipliers that might be tagged to this infrastructure money (assuming a maximum of $375B) but completely disregards the effects of how the majority of the money was used in the last repatriation – mainly stock repurchases, special dividends, and executive compensation, something that does very little to churn the economy for the majority of Americans.
Great and most important article.
Let’s go back a few decades, and President Kennedy has just gotten passed legislation called the Interest Equalization Tax, meant to encourage investors in investing in America, instead of overseas.
Next, on October 16, 1963, Rep. Wright Patman introduces the Patman Report to congress, a report on foundations and trusts and how they allow the super-rich to hide their ownership and wealth. This will provide ammunition for Kennedy’s proposed action to tax offshore monies of the super-rich. [The Patman Report: Tax-Exempt Foundations and Charitable Trusts: Their Impact on Our Economy]
On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy is murdered in Dallas.
What was JFK really pushing for?
Sure, wealthy U.S. interests assassinated Kennedy because he boosted military spending and cut taxes on the wealthy and just loved Wall Street and the military-industrial complex too much. Some people will believe anything.
It’s just historical revisionism by the likes of Oliver Stone, sweet bedtimes stories for ‘liberals’ who need myths to believe in. JFK was a tool of the military-industrial complex, devoted to the war in Vietnam, servant of the wealthy and powerful – get over your misguided hero-worship, already.
But he did support cutting oil industry subsidies and he was deeply hated in Texas