Posted on 02/02/2015 9:50:43 AM PST by Kaslin
It takes a very specialized economic ignorance in order to come up with some of the policy prescriptions proposed by the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In what I can only assume is a plan to continue his pattern of proposing budgets that get soundly rejected by Congress, Barack Obama is proposing a slew of new business taxes to fund (a portion) of his $4 trillion budget.
Concerned over the rate at which businesses have been fleeing high US corporate tax rates, Obama has proposed a plan: Tax companies a little more. (Only a Democrat would think we could solve the negative impact of high taxes by further hiking tax rates.) Proposed as a way to partially fund his $478 billion public-works plan, Obama is poised to ask Congress for a 14 percent tax on all past foreign profits from US companies. Future foreign profits would then be taxed at 19 percent; regardless of whether or not they ever intend on repatriating the money back to America.
After all: Those evil capitalists probably had it coming.
Ostensibly, this money is desperately needed in order to help America rebuild her crumbling infrastructure… Which kinda begs the question: What the heck have we been spending all our money on recently? After all, it’s not like we have a shortage of tax revenue. The US government took in more money than it ever has in its history, and it’s still not enough for Obama & Company. It almost looks like DC might have a spending problem; but, hey… I’m a private sector guy. I actually have to pay attention to that “revenue vs expenditures” ratio. (I even have an Excel spread sheet. I’ll forward Obama a copy.)
For some reason, taxing the money that US companies make overseas has been a long-lost cause for the Left. It is almost as if they sit around at night thinking to themselves “what don’t we tax yet?” When a US company makes a buck in a foreign country, and brings that dollar back home (to pay employees, expand their business, create jobs, and generally contribute to the nation’s overall prosperity), Uncle Sam currently levies the industrialized world’s highest tax rate on them. Unsurprisingly, businesses therefore decide to keep some of their hard-earned money from coming back home.
And Obama, in all of his central-planning brilliance, is planning on raising their taxes… This is what passes as “tax reform” with our current administration? Oh, sure: We already have 75,000 pages of Federal tax code; but let’s “reform” that by adding another layer of complexity! And, while we’re at it, let’s go ahead and make it even less attractive for international businesses to set up shop stateside.
Rather than tackling the complex and burdensome taxes that plague international businesses who headquarter in America, Obama is interested in making their life a little harder via the IRS. Regardless of his State of the Union babbling, he’s not making corporate taxes simpler, fairer, or more inviting. In fact, he’s making it more complex, more arbitrary, and far less hospitable. And for what? So the government can (maybe) collect a few billion more dollars (because a $3 trillion revenue stream just isn’t going to cut it for Obama’s grand plans).
Obama’s dogmatic addiction to Elizabeth Warren style “tax reform” shows his complete lack of imagination, or innovation. Like most of his “copy and paste” State of the Union address, his latest proposal is nothing more than a recycled progressive scheme to separate capitalists from their capital.
So, if it feels like we’ve “heard this one before”, it’s because we pretty much have.
Why do we want golden eggs when there is so much juicy succulent goose meat just waiting for Barry to run up to it and yell “All My SnackBar” and chop it’s head off with an Axe....
I guess Burger King aren’t coming back any time soon.
Companies that are penalized by the tax code simply raise their prices, passing all taxes onto their customers. Ultimately raising costs (taxes) onto the middle class. It’s one vicious cycle the left seemingly doesn’t understand.
Let’s bake more pies rather than slicing up the existing ones.
Maybe he could start by getting Al Sharpton to pay taxes.
Exactly
There’s much more to this as well (see the other thread currently running on this subject)
Corporations are usually locked (by a variety of factors) into reinvesting profits in the countries where that profit is made.
So it’ll be easier for those companies to pay for this proposed tax by raiding operations and investments here in the US.
Net result: investors (like retirees with 401ks) here in the US take the hit from reduced dividends and stock growth. Workers take the hit from reduced spending on new projects and expanded domestic operations.
Why can’t the argument of the damage caused by such proposals be made to even the LIV?
See the Gruber argument about how Obamacare got passed.
Yup. All he has to do is accuse these companies of being “unpatriotic” and the low-infos will eat it up.
Ok, your question deserves a little more detail than that ;-)
The way I see it, trying to explain the damage that will be done needs to happen. But the LIV voter is a couple steps too removed from the direct impact, and will be innundated from a variety of “trusted” sources (the news media, their union leadership, friends/neighbors who are on the DNC’s talking points list etc) with cheap and meaningless, but contradictory, rhetoric focusing on how the evil corporations are “sheltering” their money overseas so they don’t have to pay their fair share.
Which is an incredibly powerful argument to make to someone who isn’t going to dig very deep into the implications of this policy.
Compare/contrast to the immediate and overwhelming response to the just as craven INS idiotic 529 plan scheme. Which could be summed up easily as having the direct impact of screwing with kids’ college savings.
The key word in your statement is "seemingly". Trust me, they understand. The only reason they refer to the middle class and poor in trying to sell their policies, is because they can use them against the Republicans when they don't go along with their socialist plans. As in, "Unlike us democRATS, the Republicans are for the rich and against the middle class and poor." The liberals don't care about the middle class and poor. They know their policies make it worse for these groups of voters. But they use them as shills in their three-card Monte game of playing one group against another so they can maintain their power.
This is especially true with Obama and his crew. They don't care if the middle class and poor are crushed by their policies even more so than they have been already. They want to make America look bad and knock her down a few notches off her high horse. If that means running their wagons over the middle class and poor, so be it. These goons are ideologues. They care nothing about the people who they hurt except to be able to use them achieve their own ends.
Craven AND idiotic, in my above.
Not sure how I misspelled “and” to get autocorrect to chang it to INS
Like a typical Kogelo ruler in Africa...mthis guy is a real retard, it is all he got.
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