[lbo-talk] Comments on WSJ article "The Price of Taxing the Rich"

Jordan Hayes jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com
Wed Mar 30 09:58:50 PDT 2011


cb says:


> I was thinking the slogan should be "Tax Big Business".

One thing I haven't seen covered too much is how skewed corporate taxes have become; personal income and payroll taxes are almost predictable these days (we're headed to 1040-EZ for everyone :-), but there's a huge difference between effective tax rates for corporations. Some have gone way down, and some are actually facing what some call "the highest tax rates in the world" -- the rate isn't the problem, I think. It's the even application of the rates that's the big issue in the US.

And the difference comes down to special-purpose loopholes; that's what has to get rolled back. It's likely that if we just got rid of the ~1000 or so special breaks that have been worked out in the last 20 years -- though most of them since 2000 -- we could raise revenue a lot and even could consider lowering the stated rate.

It's a small number of corporations that have shirked their taxes while everyone else can't seem to make sense of things.

/jordan



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