Quote:
Originally Posted by zimmy
He brings it up because there is a loud group of people trying to spin the perception that we have tax rates like Belgium. They are not. The conversation needs to be based around reality.
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I am not familiar with this loud group claiming that we have tax rates like Belgium. That is so obviously wrong that it would hardly be worth trying to rebut by bringing up Reagan and Eisenhower. For one, Belgium has a VAT tax. Some (many?) here feel we are headed for such a tax here. Then we would be more like Belgium.
Also, the argument that U.S. corporations pay far less than our high corporate tax rate, as if that makes their tax burden less than foreign companies, is misleading. Some do pay an effective amount below the rate, but some pay close to it. On average, according to a N.Y. Times business section article on May 2, 2011, U.S. companies pay about 25% of their profits in corporate taxes. They pay state and local corp. taxes, as well, that many foreign companies don't pay. What they actually pay in federal taxes, according to the article is a few percentage points higher than those in most other major industrial countries. Nor does the article specify whether the comparison is to what most foreign companies actually pay, or if it is to their tax "rates." Most foreign countries also allow for many exemptions so that when we compare American "effective" rates to foreign tax "rates" it leaves out what foreign effective rates are.
As for our corporations shipping money offshore (transferring profits to countries with lower or non-existent rates) only happens because those countries DO have lower rates.
Again, is this what this coming election is about?