A Jobs Program That Costs Us Nothing
by Kevin Kelton
Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to merge two opposing problems into one solution. I think Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump could score a major policy victory by addressing jobs and untaxed offshore profits at the same time.
American companies are currently holding 2.4 trillion dollars in accumulated profits offshore to avoid what they consider onerous U.S. corporate tax rates. That’s almost $800 billion in owed taxes that we may never ever see.
To get that money back into the U.S. economy, politicians are proposing temporary preferential tax rates – called a transition tax – that they’d like to apply to those profits to coerce them back to the United States. President Obama has proposed a transition tax rate of 14%, but corporate lobbyists and their bagmen in congress are balking that it’s too high. Some want it at ten percent, some want it at six or less – rates so low that they would be seen as a giant giveaway to corporate greed. Some even propose a “tax holiday” by setting the rate at zero.
That’s not a “holiday.” That’s a full and absolute pardon.
At the same time, American companies are not hiring at as brisk a pace as we need to grow GDP and spark wage growth.
So how about we merge the two problems into one solution? What if we made creating American jobs a patriotic and profitable thing to do? Read More
