¶ … Rubin (2016), President-elect Trump has vowed to stop inversions, but has offered a novel solution: a lower corporate tax rate. Trump's theory is that a lower corporate tax rate would "sharply reduce companies' incentives to take a foreign address," (p. 1). The corporate tax rate is currently at 35%. Trump and his pick for Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, suggest that 15% would generate sufficient federal revenues while discouraging companies from establishing themselves abroad or circumventing taxes through loopholes. One of the ways foreign-based firms evade taxes is through earnings stripping, essentially borrowing from themselves to generate interest deductions built into the current codes (Rubin, 2016). This helps the companies avoid paying the 35%, also pushing their income into jurisdictions with lower tax rates (Rubin, 2016). Having a foreign address offers additional benefits, and many companies have multiple inversions, something that came to light when Pfizer announced their plans to go offshore by using subsidiaries. The government responded to the internal borrowing with an earnings stripping rule that "relabeled some internal debt as equity and imposed steep compliance costs," (Rubin, 2016). Countries have also been expatriating their earnings to avoid paying American taxes (Bischoff, 2016). High corporate tax rates sound good in theory: extract money from the wealthiest to help reduce inequitable wealth. Yet the
High corporate tax rates do not promote wealth equity, and nor does it promote a healthy Treasury.
The 35% corporate tax rate is exorbitant. Compared with other countries, it ends up being on par with Chad, Congo, and Zambia -- hardly emblems of good governance, let alone strong economic stability and growth (Bischoff, 2016). Among wealthy nations, only Belgium comes close with a corporate tax rate of 33%. More sensible nations like Canada has a high but manageable corporate tax rate of 25%. Japan's is 22%, Germany's is only 12.5%. Clearly, corporate tax rates are not linked to good governance or economic growth.
Somewhere in the range of 15% seems manageable. In fact, after inverted companies weasel their way out of tax loopholes, their effective tax rates come in at about that rate (Bischoff, 2016). With a cleaner, simpler system in which companies based in the United States remain in the United States, overall Treasury revenues could end up climbing in the long run because more companies would be opting out of oversees presence in favor of the more business-friendly climate…
Unemployment Rate The Disparity in the Unemployment Rate in the United States A recent article in the Sun Journal by Margaret Fisher (2012) has raised some serious questions as to the true state of the economy. While statistics from the department of labor assert the unemployment rate has dropped, giving the impression that the economy is in a recovery mode, Fisher maintains that this is misleading due to the fact that many
Unemployment rate in the United States has fluctuated between nine and ten percent for well over two years now ("Labor Force Statistics"). That rate is more than double what it was a mere ten years ago, putting millions more Americans on the unemployment compensation rolls. More alarming than the numbers is the general feeling of pessimism that has enveloped the country as the population wonders when the economy might turn
The big three could not afford to keep up production in the United States at levels previously seen and still make enough of a profit to lead them out of financial disaster. GM alone reduced its workforce to fewer than 45,000 workers (Feeley, 2011). Most of these jobs went overseas, where labor was cheap. As such, "the state of Detroit is not really surprising given the reorganization of the
Unemployment Issues in the U.S. There many factors and issues that relate to the unemployment situation in the United States. This paper delves into the unemployment data over the past ten years, and examines the economic conditions that create large numbers of unemployed persons. The paper also looks at the various approaches to unemployment -- the Keynesian viewpoint and the classical viewpoint vis-a-vis unemployment -- and provides scholarly narratives on the
Unemployment in the Recent Recession: A Comparison of Cyclical and Marxian Theories The recent (or ongoing) recession has affected the entire globe, though some countries have been harder hit than others. In the United States, unemployment hit higher levels than it has seen in quite some time -- more than doubling at the depth of the recession in 2010 from its pre-recession low (in the current decade) in 2006 and 2007
This is what has led to so many foreigners working in the country already. The foreign workers are therefore a symptom of a greater problem. This problem is not macroeconomic failure -- the Saudi economy is robust and creates jobs -- but is simply does not recognize that macroeconomic principles alone will not address the issue of unemployment among Saudi nationals. Consider the case of China as corollary. In both
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