Roger Bybee at
The Progressive writes
How Romney Would Ship Jobs Overseas:
There has been precious little discussion in the media on one of the most dangerous and devastating features of the Romney-Ryan tax plan: the complete elimination of taxes on the overseas operations of U.S. corporations.
The Romney home page calls for the nation to “switch to a territorial tax system,” which translates into an end to taxation of the profits piled up offshore by American-based corporations. This radical step would create huge incentives to ship U.S. jobs overseas, where they would never face U.S. taxes, and to manipulate corporate earnings reports to claim that profits generated in the U.S. were actually produced offshore.[...]
Tax expert David Cay Johnston, Reuters correspondent and author of the just-published Fine Print: How Big Companies Use ‘Plain English’ to Rob Us Blind, warns, “The Romney-Ryan plan would insure that any profits created offshore by U.S. corporations would never be taxed by the U.S. government. This would create a tremendous incentive to move more and more U.S. jobs overseas to escape taxes on the profits that foreign workers produce for them.”
The shift to “territoriality” would also unleash an even higher level of corporate manipulation of the tax system than prevails now, where as many costs as possible are ascribed to U.S. operations and the profits credited to their foreign subsidiaries. Major multinational corporations like Apple and GE and Nike use a variety of accounting tricks—especially, setting up hundreds of shell corporations--to essentially launder their profits before moving their lightly taxed money home.
The imposition of a “territorial” tax system exempting U.S. firms’ foreign operations thus would make the current system infinitely worse, both in terms of job loss and shrinkage of taxes paid by major corporations.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2007: Capitulating or losing—there's a difference:
So this week we'll see your standard-issue Democratic capitulation on Iraq. Sure, Reid and his pals will talk about "compromise", but "compromises" include both sides surrendering something to find "common ground". Yet watch Democrats rubber stamp another $200 billion for this disastrous, unpopular (hated!) war, without getting a single thing in return.
Democrats, it seems, have forgotten what a real compromise looks like, to everyone's detriment (except the GOPs).
Clearly, the most obvious tactic — refuse to fund until Republicans genuinely compromise — is beyond the grasp of the risk-averse Democratic cowards in DC. At least in the Senate. And Pelosi has shown no inclination of stepping up to the plate and showing real leadership on the issue — refusing to cave to the GOP minority in the other chamber. Reid may be in a weak position thanks to the Senate's rules, but Pelosi is under no such pressures.
So if playing hardball is beyond them, then why not simply lose? Why not pass a Republican funding bill with next-to-ZERO Democratic support? Pin this god-forsaken war completely on Republicans. Why is there this pathetic need to "pass something" with "bipartisan support"?
There is a clear disagreement on this most important of issues facing our country. Why not underline that disagreement and at least get some residual political benefit out of it? Let them have their war without enabling it further.
Tweet of the Day:
MT @indecision: If airplane windows don't roll down, how does the pilot stick his head out the window to make sure his dog is okay?
— @AntDeRosa via TweetDeck
Kagro in the Morning is back from the weekend following The Worst Week Ever for Romney, and Mitt puts a cherry on top of his FAIL sundae on
60 Minutes. We had our extended Monday polling and punditry round-up today, with
Greg Dworkin and
Steve Singiser, and took a historical but still political detour to discuss the H2 network's show, "How the States Got Their Shapes." Fascinating stuff. Seriously!
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