The Patriot Post® · Underestimating the Burden of Corporate Taxes

As more and more companies seek to lower their tax burdens through a strategy known as inversion – merging with foreign-based companies and then re-incorporating overseas to take advantage of lower tax rates – one new academic paper is claiming the corporate tax rate in the U.S. isn’t so bad after all.

According to Edward D. Kleinbard, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law and a former chief of staff for the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, our tax code is actually the “envy” of international companies. And that highest-in-the-world corporate tax rate? Yes, 39.1% – that one. Hardly a burden. Who knew?

In fact, according to Kleinbard, tying corporate competitiveness to our tax rate relative to the rest of the world is a “fact-free” narrative. In his paper, he writes, “Despite the claims of corporate apologists, international business ‘competitiveness’ has nothing to do with the reasons for these [inversions]. … [W]hether one measures effective marginal or overall tax rates, sophisticated U.S. multinational firms are burdened by tax rates that are the envy of their international peers.”

What Kleinbard means is, in reality, corporations pay far less than the actual rate. He cites a 2013 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report noting that, for tax year 2010, U.S. corporations paid around 13% in federal income taxes and approximately 17% when foreign, state and local income taxes were included.

He writes, “It is true of course that the federal corporate tax rate – nominally, 35 percent – is too high relative to world norms, and that the ersatz territorial system requires firms to waste money in tax planning and structuring, but effective marginal tax rates and overall effective tax rates reach the level of the U.S. headline rate only when firms studiously ignore the feast of tax planning opportunities laid out before them on the groaning board of corporate tax expenditures.”

In other words, the tax rate is high, but it’s not so bad because corporations don’t actually pay it. So it doesn’t impact competitiveness. It’s a nice sound bite, but even as Kleinbard claims the competitive narrative lacks facts, his lacks logic.

As economists Stephen Moore and Arthur Laffer note, for example, despite having the highest corporate tax rate in the world, the U.S. has one of the lowest tax revenues, at just 1.5% of GDP. This underscores the fact that the exorbitant rate is, indeed, driving companies to identify legal ways to lower their tax burdens. It also highlights all the tax favors such as wind-tax credits and energy subsidies that are essentially graft doled out to various politicians’ favorite campaign supporters. That system will be very difficult to change.

Furthermore, the costs of complying with the tax code are significant and the high tax rate encourages companies to outsource jobs overseas. Not only that, but as the American Enterprise Institute’s Kevin Hassett points out, “[C]orporate tax rates affect wage levels across countries. Higher corporate taxes lead to lower wages.” So the burden of these supposedly not-too-high taxes impacts wages, thereby hurting employees, and increases compliance costs to companies – costs invariably passed on to shareholders, consumers and, again, employees in the form of lower wages.

But it doesn’t end there. We can’t discuss the corporate tax code without taking into account the many small businesses that file taxes as individuals. The Patriot Post is one of them. Lacking the legal benefits and breaks corporations receive – and unable to relocate or move profits overseas – these small businesses can face a federal tax rate of up to 39.6%. Small businesses are key to American employment, and high taxes hurt.

Barack Obama has called on corporations that use inversions to lower their taxes to display a little “economic patriotism” instead. But perhaps the true patriotism would be in supporting an economic climate that actually encourages American businesses and entrepreneurs to grow, produce and create jobs.

Instead of focusing on punishing profit with the government-stamped seizure of revenue and aiming for the “fundamental transformation of the United States,” Obama and Congress should work to make taxes as low and impartial as possible. But we’re not holding our breath.