IRS Commissioner: Obama Used False Numbers to Attack Low-Tax Jurisdictions
During the campaign, President Obama asserted that tax havens “cost” the Treasury $100 billion per year (see, for instance, 8:07 of this video), echoing the assertions made by demagogues such as Michigan’s Democratic Senator, Carl Levin. Many gullible journalists proceeded to disseminate this number, even though I repeatedly warned that it was a blatant fabrication. Indeed, it was the first falsehood that I punctured in my video entitled, Tax Havens: Myths vs Facts.
So it was with considerable interest that I read about the recent testimony of IRS Commissioner, Douglas Shulman, who acknowledged that the Obama-Levin numbers are “wild estimates” that “don’t have much basis.” Here is the key passage from a report from Bloomberg:
Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman said projections that the US loses $US100 billion annually to offshore tax havens are “wild estimates” that “don’t have much basis”. …”Those numbers are pretty broad numbers,” Shulman said. The $US100 billion figure, a compilation of private-sector estimates, is often cited by Michigan Senator Carl Levin… North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan also frequently cites the $US100 billion figure.
This, of course, raises an interesting question. If politicians are willing to use dishonest numbers to push a certain policy, what does that suggest about the merits of the policy?
Filed under: International Economics and Development; Tax and Budget Policy
Obama ‘Offshore’ Tax Plan Will Cost U.S. Companies Business and Jobs
The Obama administration is ready to follow through on campaign promises to crack down on U.S. companies that “ship jobs overseas.” The administration announced this weekend that it would seek to raise taxes on the so-called active earnings of U.S.-owned affiliates abroad. According to a front-page story in this morning’s Wall Street Journal:
Under current law, U.S. companies can defer taxes indefinitely on the many of the profits they say they have earned overseas until they “repatriate” that money back to the U.S. The administration seeks to sharply limit the tax deductions that companies taking advantage of deferral can take.
Of course, there is a perfectly good reason why we don’t tax what U.S. companies earn and keep abroad: those companies are already paying taxes in the countries where their affiliates are located, and at the same rates that apply to multinationals from other countries competing in the same markets.
As I pointed out in a Cato Free Trade Bulletin in January, locating affiliates in foreign markets is now the chief way that U.S. companies reach new customers outside the United States. If we sock them with the relatively high U.S. corporate rate, U.S. companies will be less able to compete against German and Japanese multinationals in the same markets who need only pay the (almost always) lower corporate rate assessed by the host country. And as I noted in January, any jobs created at affiliates abroad tend to promote more employment at the parent company back in the United States.
This demagogic grab for more revenue will only cripple the ability of U.S. companies to expand their sales in global markets, putting in jeopardy the U.S.-based jobs that support their foreign affiliates.
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