Ease corporate tax by hitting up shareholders
A higher tax on investors and a lower tax on corporations could keep more investments in the US.
An Apple employee brings computers into headquarters during the Apple shareholders meeting in Cupertino, Calif., on Feb. 23, 2011. Would it make sense to shift some taxes from corporations to their shareholders?
Paul Sakuma / AP / File
While there seems to be growing agreement in Washington that the U.S. needs to cut its tax rate on corporations, there is (surprise) no consensus at all on how to pay for this. One way: Raise taxes on capital gains and dividends.
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Howard Gleckman is a resident fellow at The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, the author of Caring for Our Parents, and former senior correspondent in the Washington bureau of Business Week. (http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org)
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This idea was one element of the broad tax reforms proposed last year by the chairs of President Obama’s deficit reduction commission, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, and by the Bipartisan Policy Center’s deficit panel, chaired by Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici. Both panels relied in part on analysis in a paper by my Tax Policy Center colleagues Eric Toder, Ben Harris, and Rosanne Altshuler. The plan has so far received little attention. It deserves more.
The plan would tax dividends and long-term capital gains at ordinary income rates, with a maximum rate on gains of 28 percent–compared to 15 percent today–and use the revenue to cut corporate tax rates. Those of you with long memories may remember these investment rates were the law back in 1997.
Eric, Ben, and Rosanne figure the revenue this idea would generate would allow Congress to cut the corporate rate from 35 percent to about 26 percent, assuming corporations and investors do not change behavior (by, say, reducing dividend payments). Since they almost certainly will adjust, a redesign would probably buy less of a rate cut. At a roundtable last Friday sponsored by Tax Analysts, Congressional Research Service economist Jane Gravelle suggested it might get rates down to just 30 or 31 percent. Still, that ain’t nothing.
Here’s a bit of background to help explain what this is all about: Economists believe that all income should be taxed once but only once. By that standard, the current taxation of corporations is a mess. In theory, corporate income is double-taxed—once at the firm level and again when income is distributed to shareholders through dividends or capital gains. In reality, some is taxed repeatedly while some is not taxed at all.
