Jack2014 wrote:
Corporate America does not pay the worlds highest taxes after deductions for all kinds of expenses. They also have taken US deductions for expenses for generation of overseas profits w/o declaring profits.
The GOP Tax Bill Is an Attempt to Destroy Government
Americans need more services, not less.
By Robert L. BorosageNOVEMBER 3, 2017
fbtwmailmsgwa
Mitch McConnell
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell with Senate majority whip John Cornyn, and Senator John Barrasso, talk to reporters, July 25, 2017. (AP Photo / Jacquelyn Martin)
Ready To Resist?
Sign up to get three concrete actions in your inbox every week.
The House Republican tax bill has been introduced, packaged beautifully with lies. Now House Republicans will push to pass, in one week, a 500-page bill written in secret that t***sforms the tax code. Powerful special interests will spend millions for and against. Legions of lobbyists will fill congressional offices. Experts will duel over the effects. Trump is already boasting about âa great Christmas presentâ of the biggest tax cuts ever.
Republicans hope that the fog of competing claims will cover their tracks. In the midst of the frenzy, remember one thing: this entire project is utterly wrong-headed. Few politicians dare say it, but the reality is Americans are not overtaxed. They are underserved by their government.
American corporations and American citizens are not overtaxed, compared with other industrial nations. The greatest impediment to corporate competitiveness isnât what corporations pay in taxes; it is an inefficient, outdated, and increasingly dangerous infrastructure. It is time wasted in traffic jams, slow trains, and overcrowded airports. Our broadband is slower and costs more than that of other leaders in the industrial world. Nine percent of all bridges are rated âstructurally deficientâ and 40 percent are over 50 years old. Our energy and water systems are aged and fragile. A bridge falls every other day in America. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that our increasingly decrepit infrastructure will cost about 2.5 million jobs and $7 trillion in sales by 2025. For businesses, the best use of public dollars isnât tax cuts for the rich and big corporations but investments in rebuilding America.
Similarly, Americaâs workers are gouged far more by inadequate and wasteful public investment than by high taxes. We pay about two times as much per capita for health careâwith worse results and leaving millions of people still not covered. The costs of educating kidsâfrom pre-K to summer programs to soaring college tuitions and feesârise far faster than stagnant wages. Crowded and pot-holed roads steal time and tax cars and tires. Flint is not alone in suffering from aging pipelines and poisonous water. For working people, the best use of public dollars is to invest in Medicare for All, tuition-free college, universal pre-K, and efficient roads and water systems.
Trump and Republicans want to sell tax cuts as key to growth and jobs, but this too is a con. In using public money to create jobs, the most authoritative assessmentâmade by Moodyâs Mark Zandi, a former adviser to John McCainâis that investing in infrastructure would produce far more âbang for the buckâ in jobs and growth than tax cuts would create. The money would be more likely to stay here, since 35 percent of corporate tax cuts would go to foreign investors or companies. The working people hired on public projects spend their wages, the rich less so. All this is particularly true now: Corporate profits are near-record levels, ine******y is at record extremes, and interest rates are still low. Corporations donât need tax breaks. They need customers. The rich will get more money under the GOP plan, but theyâve already captured so much of the nationâs income and wealth that even the conservative International Monetary Fund has warned that ine******y has reached extremes that are an impediment to growth and jobs.
Republicans hypocritically will run up deficits and add a trillion or two to the national debt, but the real damage is that they will exacerbate what is now a crippling public-investment deficit. For all the alarms youâll hear from Democrats and some Republicans in the next weeks, the budget deficits arenât much of an economic concern. Inflation, if anything, is too low, and America bonds sell at remarkably low interest rates.
Budget deficits, however, are a political club. Once the tax cuts are passed, Republicans will return to hectoring about deficits and debt. Their budget documents already call for brutal cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the entire range of public services. As crippling as Americaâs public investment is today, passage of the Republican tax plan virtually insures that it will get far worse.
Notes on Frumpf "K**LERTAX PLAN
As Republicans rush to get this bill passed before it is read, the big lies will be exposed. The rich will clean up; some in the middle classâparticularly those with large familiesâwill pay more. Wealthy real-estate operators, investors, lawyers, and accountants will pocket most of the so-called small business âpass-throughâ tax break. Repatriation and territoriality will give corporations even more incentive to rig their books to report profits in tax havens abroad. But the specific outrages are neither as destructive nor as appalling as the entire project itself. By making it harder to address Americaâs crippling public-investment deficits, large tax cuts, if passed, will accelerate this countryâs decline.