Bill Clinton: America’s Corporate Tax Rates Are So High They’re Uncompetitive
As President Obama continues his class war games, demanding higher taxes and more government spending and cloaking that agenda with rhetorical attacks on America’s most successful businesses and citizens, a more practical President is saying that our corporate tax rates are too high to be competitive internationally and should be lowered.
Though it’s a bit ironic that this is coming from a President who once raised those corporate tax rates. And to be clear, Clinton is calling for an end to certain deductions to go along with the rate cuts. But generally, to me, this makes sense.
ASPEN, Colo. — President Bill Clinton says the nation’s corporate tax rate is “uncompetitive” and called for a lower rate as part of a “mega-deal” to raise the debt ceiling.
“When I was president, we raised the corporate income-tax rates on corporations that made over $10 million [a year],” the former president told the Aspen Ideas Festival on Saturday evening.
“It made sense when I did it. It doesn’t make sense anymore — we’ve got an uncompetitive rate. We tax at 35 percent of income, although we only take about 23 percent. So we should cut the rate to 25 percent, or whatever’s competitive, and eliminate a lot of the deductions so that we still get a fair amount, and there’s not so much variance in what the corporations pay. But how can they do that by Aug. 2?”
Generally speaking, this should be the model for responsible tax reform. Taxes should be low, and be applied universally with no exceptions. What Clinton may have in mind is a rate reduction that doesn’t quite offset the cost to taxpayers of eliminating deductions, which is essentially a tax hike. But that’s only an argument for lowering the overall late even further.
Our tax code is too complicated, riddle with loopholes and exemptions. Better to have lower overall taxes than higher taxes with a maze of deductions that make it utterly confusing.
Tags: bill clinton, Taxes
