Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute, isn't too impressed with President Obama's support for the latest effort at international tax reform.
That's the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project, in which the Group of 20 countries is drafting a new set of international tax principles designed to generate more tax revenue from major multinational companies.
The Obama administration backs the project to ensure that more corporate tax payments enter the government's coffers. "But as the project heads for its end-of-year deadline ... nobody in Washington is paying attention to a simple fact: the United States lost, and lost big,"
Mandel writes in the New York Times.
"BEPS rules will likely not generate more tax revenues for the United States. Instead, they will encourage American companies to quickly move high-paying jobs, such as those of research scientists and software developers, to Europe to take advantage of lower tax rates."
Without quick corporate tax reform by Congress, BEPS could "turn into an enormous job-and-revenue grab by Europe, and an enormous loss of jobs and revenues by the United States," Mandel argues.
Elsewhere on the tax front, as several GOP presidential candidates embrace the idea of the flat tax, the man who made the idea popular, Steve Forbes, lauds states for cutting taxes.
"A variety of tax experiments are currently under way that bode well for radical federal tax reform after the 2016 elections," the Forbes Media editor-in-chief
writes on Forbes.com.
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, R, pushed through tax cuts two years ago that now "are starting to yield a bumper crop in prosperity," Forbes says.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, R, "is also hacking away at his state’s personal income tax, with an eye to eliminating it altogether, relying instead on broad-based consumption taxes," he writes. "Even blue states are getting the tax message." Forbes cites Maine as an example.
"Over time states with no income taxes perform better than those with the heaviest burdens: better in economic growth, population growth, job growth, personal income growth and–liberals, please note–government revenue growth," he argues.
"What the states are demonstrating is that simplification and major income tax rate reductions generate prosperity."
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