U.S. Cannot Encourage Job Creation with Second-Highest Corporate Tax Rate Among Industrialized Nations, Scott Hodge Says
"Jobs, jobs, jobs" seems to be the major theme of President Obama's State of the Union address tonight, but the president is overlooking the biggest obstacle to job creation: America's high business tax, according to Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge. Hodge offered the following statement:
America's business tax system is way out of line with the rest of the industrialized word. How can American businesses create jobs when they are paying the second-highest corporate tax rate in the world? How can the American economy attract jobs from foreign investors when it offers them the second-highest corporate tax rate in the world?
And even though corporate tax rates are the most harmful for economic growth, neither President Obama nor Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, who will be delivering the Republican response, is expected to call for lowering America's corporate tax rate. Rather than playing investment banker with the tax code, they should be urging Congress to adopt long-term tax reforms that make the United States more competitive. Lower rates for all are fairer and better than incentives for some.
On the theme of helping the middle class, Hodge urged both speakers to avoid playing one class against another and pointed out that some in the middle already pay no federal income tax at all:
More than 46 million people already are off the tax rolls. That's nearly one-third of all federal income tax returns filed. Our studies have shown that so-called 'middle-class' families - in some cases those making more than $100,000 per year - get more back in federal spending benefits than they pay in federal taxes.
The Tax Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that has monitored fiscal policy at the federal, state and local levels since 1937.
This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 1/29/2010, at The Unreligious Right
ReplyDelete