Taxation

Tax Cuts, Less-Intrusive Gov’t Help Canada Soar

Canada flag low taxes economic success by IBD Editorials –

Success: Away from the low growth and high regulation of an America under Washington’s thumb, our northern neighbor is economically strong. As 2011 ends, Canada has announced yet another tax cut — and will soar even more.

The Obama administration and its economic czars have flailed about for years, baffled about how to get the U.S. economy growing.

In reality, the president need look no further than our neighbor, Canada, whose solid growth is the product of tax cuts, fiscal discipline, free trade, and energy development. That’s made Canada a roaring puma nation, while its supposedly more powerful southern neighbor stands on the outside looking in. [Read more…]

Why 20% Should Be New 25% In Reforming Corporate Rate

Investors Business Daily by Ryan Ellis –

If there’s a common denominator in tax reform and economic growth packages, it’s this: the corporate rate is too high, and needs to come down for the sake of keeping our employers competitive internationally. Even most on the Left have accepted this.

The most common tax-rate target is 25%. Because of how the world has been moving in the direction of low corporate tax rates, however, this is no longer good enough — and might even result in a worse outcome than the status quo.

First, a little background. A generation or two ago, the entire developed world had high corporate income-tax rates. In 1981, the developed nation average was 47%. Canada had a 51% rate. The United Kingdom levied a rate of 52%. [Read more…]

Coddling Misinformation About Taxation

High Taxes Misinformation about Taxation Buffet by Chris Banescu –
Warren Buffett and President Obama claim that the rich do not pay enough taxes. They both blame the American tax code of being unfair and coddling the rich. Both have been pushing the same class-warfare narrative for many years, using current US capital gains and dividends taxation rates as evidence for their big government progressive agenda. Both are spreading misinformation about all the taxes corporations and individuals actually pay.

As far back in 2007, Mr. Buffet, the third-richest man in the world, began criticizing the US tax code for its low tax rates on dividends and capital gains from long-term investments. One of his most infamous statements, one often repeated by the Left to support its punish-the-rich schemes, was made in a speech at a $4,600-a-seat fundraiser for Senator Hillary Clinton in New York:

“The 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”

[Read more…]

Your Money Belongs To Politicians

by Priscilla Petty –
If I had to pinpoint one single way in which our country has gone astray, I’d say that it’s when we allowed politicians to manipulate the tax code to benefit those whom they favor. There are many ways, of course, in which our country’s trajectory has taken a downward rather than upward turn, but politicians’ control of individual citizens’ money, their taking great quantities of it as though it actually belonged to the politicians to use for their own benefit and for politicians’ chosen purposes, has bankrupted us not only fiscally but morally. [Read more…]

Yes, Taxes Do Change Behavior

10/23/2010 – Tom Roberson –
Bloomberg Businessweek details the complicated “Dutch Sandwich” tax strategy employed by Google to avoid the massive tax hit it would incur on overseas profits repatriated to the U.S. After reading this and seeing the lengths that U.S. companies go to protect their profits, can anyone seriously believe that taxes do not influence behavior? Should anyone be surprised that these innovative companies are able to develop innovative tax avoidance strategies? Let me point out that these are perfectly legal tax avoidance strategies and it is management’s duty to pursue every legal opportunity to minimize corporate tax obligations to maximize shareholder value. [Read more…]

The Obama Recovery

Obama Recession8/23/2010 – Jeffrey Folks –

During the same week in which the president was vacationing in a $50,000-per-night home in Martha’s Vineyard, half a million Americans were standing in line, waiting their turn to apply for unemployment benefits. Those benefits are about $400 a week, not enough to put food on the table, pay the mortgage and car payments, and cover medical and other expenses. Not only that, but they run out (or used to) at 26 weeks. Even with Congress’s election-year largesse, which has tacked on an additional 73 weeks, unemployment benefits must run out at some point. More and more Americans — those who have begun calling themselves the 99ers — are now arriving at that point. [Read more…]

Economy Needs Heart Transplant, Obama Offering Band-Aid

Economy Needs Heart Transplant Not Band-AidAmerica’s economic situation needs an emergency heart transplant, but Obama and the Democrats keep offering band-aids instead. We need a major change in government economic, tax, and fiscal policies not more government bailouts. Yet the president is doing nothing to reverse the enormous uncertainty fostered by his own administration’s aggressive anti-business and pro high-tax initiatives and rhetoric.

In the latest indication that our president has no clue why businesses are struggling and unwilling to hire, Obama is trying to force through another $30 billion government bailout program to “help banks boost lending to small businesses.” Unfortunately, it’s not the lack of available funds that are stopping businesses from expanding and generating new jobs. It’s the massive economic uncertainty and instability created by misguided government mandates (especially the oppressive regulations of ObamaCare), coupled with the massive tax increases coming in January 2011, that have spooked companies and forced them into defensive economic positions. [Read more…]