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Anyone who supports the current tax system in America is unpatriotic.
There, I said it. The current IRS tax
system is anti-American. It sends jobs and factories and research
facilities that should be located inside the land of the free to places
like Singapore, Ireland, and Indonesia. It hurts American workers —
especially unionized blue-collar workers who see their jobs shipped
overseas. And our workers’ wages are lower than they would be without
this perverted tax code.
From a competitiveness standpoint, this
is like Tim Howard playing goalie with just one hand. He’s still better
than most, but it’s just dumb.
No rational person can deny that our
corporate tax system puts America at a severe handicap. I spoke recently
with a former executive from Microsoft who now serves on the boards of
directors of several major U.S. manufacturing companies. “We don’t build
plants in America anymore,” he told me. “We can pay tax rates half as
high in Asia.” In many countries, he said, American companies can
arrange sweetheart deals “to cut our corporate tax to close to zero.”
They can stay in the U.S. and pay 35 percent, or they can go to
Indonesia and pay nothing.
When will Washington wake up? In recent
weeks and months, we’ve seen drug giant Pfizer threaten to become a
foreign company and Medtronic, a medical-device manufacturer, announce
it will merge with foreign owners and then move operations and jobs to
Ireland. Former Medtronic CEO Bill George told the New York Times that
taxes were a major factor in sealing the deal. Ireland’s corporate tax
rate: 12.5 percent.
Wake up!
Read more: Needed: A Patriotic Tax Code
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