Gregory Mankiw, despite being a professor of economics at Harvard, tends to be interesting. His “I Can Afford Higher Taxes. But They’ll Make Me Work Less.” (2010) may explain our lack of economic growth (the most productive workers in our society face a 90 percent marginal tax rate).
Now he’s written another nytimes piece: “How Best to Tax Business.” Let’s look at this…
Mr. Hassett finds that corporate taxes depress wages for manufacturing workers. In a world where capital is mobile and labor is not, capital escapes from high-tax nations, leaving workers behind to bear the burden of lower productivity and reduced incomes.
Most nations aim to impose taxes on economic activity that takes place within their borders. Such a system is called territorial. By contrast, the United States has a worldwide corporate tax. If a company based in the United States produces a product abroad and then sells it abroad, our Treasury takes a cut of the profits when they are brought back home. The House tax bill would move our system toward international norms. American companies would be able to compete abroad on a level playing field with companies based in other nations. The tax incentive for corporate inversions would be eliminated.
Consumption taxes would do less to discourage saving and investment and would thus be more favorable to economic growth. In addition, consumption taxes are arguably fairer: They tax the standard of living people enjoy rather than the value of what they produce. The House plan moves toward a consumption tax by allowing businesses to deduct their investment spending immediately, rather than depreciating it slowly over time. By exempting the income that businesses reinvest, the government would essentially be taxing consumed profits.
The corporate tax system is now origin-based. It levies taxes on the profit from goods produced in the United States, regardless of where they end up. An alternative, proposed in the House bill, would be to tax all goods consumed in the United States, regardless of where they are made. This destination-based approach would tax imports and exempt exports, which is sometimes called a border adjustment. In this way, the business tax would resemble many of the value-added taxes used in Europe. … The main advantage of destination-based taxation is that it is easier to determine where a good is consumed than where it is produced. In a world where multinationals produce goods using parts from around the world, origin-based taxes invite firms to game the system with transfer pricing schemes. Destination-based taxation is less easily gamed.
Now, firms can deduct interest payments to bondholders, but they cannot deduct dividend payments to equity holders. This treatment encourages firms to rely on debt rather than equity, making them more financially fragile than they would otherwise be. The House plan fixes this asymmetric treatment of debt and equity by no longer allowing firms to deduct interest payments. A business’s taxes would be based on its cash flow: revenue minus wage payments and investment spending. How this cash flow is then paid out to equity and debt holders would be irrelevant.
There are a lot of weighty issues above, but Professor Mankiw doesn’t come down strongly on any side. The summary is even more wishy-washy:
While I like the policy choices proposed by the House bill, not all economists agree. Some view the bill as too radical, risking too many unintended consequences. Others worry that transitioning from the old system to a new one is not worth the cost, even if the new one is better. Without a doubt, the coming debate will involve immense politicking. Any large tax change creates winners and losers, and the losers are sure to make their voices heard. But what matters most is whether the changes are better for the United States over all, not for special-interest groups. The more voters understand, the better off we all will be.
Mankiw says that economists can’t agree on whether these proposed changes are good or bad, presumably because they can’t understand all of the implications. Then Mankiw pins his hopes on the average voter understanding all of the implications.
From this I infer that we are screwed.
Readers: What do you think? How does a country with $20 trillion in debt squeeze cash out of companies that have the ability to move most operations to more efficient and less indebted nations?
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