Tax Holiday Sought By Multinational Corporations Would Cost $78.7 Billion

[sasha031]

A group of multinational corporations (that already pay exceedingly low taxes) have been lobbying Congress to enact what is known as a tax repatriation holiday. The plan would enable these companies to bring money they have stashed offshore back to the U.S. at a dramatically lower tax rate (instead of the statutory rate that they normally pay to repatriate money).

The corporations have united under a campaign called “WinAmerica,” and evidently they are having some effect. Yesterday, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) unveiled a bill that would let corporations repatriate their money at a tax rate of 5.25 percent (instead of the usual 35 percent). Brady said that, “this is about creating jobs, expanding U.S. businesses and strengthening American companies.”

However, when Congress approved a repatriation holiday in 2004, companies used the money to enrich their executives, not create jobs. And according to an analysis by the Joint Economic Committee a repatriation holiday today would cost close to $80 billion in lost revenue:

Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who is a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee, yesterday circulated an estimate from the Joint Committee on Taxation pegging the cost of a repatriation bill at $78.7 billion. An unsuccessful effort to create a similar holiday in 2009 would have cost the U.S. government about $30 billion over a decade in forgone revenue.

If the money that corporations brought back actually led to job creation, some might consider this worth the cost. But that’s not what happened in 2004. In fact, the Congressional Research Service found that the largest beneficiaries of the last tax holiday cut jobs over the subsequent two years. Hewlett-Packard, for instance, “returned $14.5 billion to the U.S. at a low rate in 2004 and cut its workforce by 14,500 employees in 2005.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/12/corporate-holiday-cost/

[rfranklin]

1. Okay, for every job they create, they get a pass on repatriating profit...

Say $10,000 for every job they create at a middle class salary--say $50,000 with benefits. Once that job has lasted for a year they get to bring in $10,000 tax free. Sounds like a good deal to me.

[Vinnie From Indy]

3. Sounds like a process to explore

Simply allowing the holiday so executives can shower themselves with bonuses is insane.
Cheers!

[Hannah Bell]

4. in the last tax holiday they cut jobs. enough said & fuck em.

[Wounded Bear]

2. They certainly do want to Win America don't they? nt