Larry Summers’ Corporate Tax Confusion

Cato Institute ^ | December 1, 2009 | Chris Edwards

[anglian]

At a conference yesterday, White House National Economic Council Director Larry Summers repeated a superficial critique of the U.S. corporate income tax that we’ve heard often from the Obama administration. Politico notes that Summers suggested “that U.S. corporate tax rates are relatively low, despite complaints from U.S. corporations.” And they quote him: “If you look at taxes paid by corporations as a fraction of profits, they’re actually very low” because the U.S. tax code is replete with “evasion and avoidance.”

The Obama team’s solution to the supposed problem is to pile more complex IRS rules and regulations on U.S. corporations and to increase taxes on their foreign earnings.

There are lots of problems here. One is the implication that the U.S. corporate tax is uniquely subject to evasion and avoidance. It isn’t. Corporate income taxes around the globe are subject to large avoidance and evasion pressures because of globalization and technological advance.

[anglian]

"Summers apparently wants corporations to “help the country” by paying more taxes. But Larry must know that it is individual workers, consumers, and savers who actually bear the burden of the corporate tax. These people are “the country” and they would be helped by dramatically cutting the corporate tax rate and boosting the economy."

[SonOfDarkSkies]

Note to Fat Larry (Harvard economist)...

"Suck capital out of an economic system and you kill the jobs that relied on it."