It’s Time to Stop Paying Companies to Ship Jobs Overseas
The presidential election served as a useful opportunity to educate the American people about some of the worst elements of our tax code. Mitt Romney personally demonstrated how the tax code is rigged in favor of the wealthy and his career at Bain Capital demonstrated how corporations can reap massive financial rewards, even if it means leaving closed factories and devastated communities in their wake.
As we look for ways to raise more revenue to further reduce the deficit, protect vital programs like Medicare and Social Security, and make investments in the middle class, one obvious place to start is cracking down on the tax loopholes and giveaways that incentivize companies to ship jobs overseas and subsidize investing abroad instead of here at home.
Ending these perverse incentives would bring in at least $168 BILLION over the next ten years. Just to put that into perspective, it’s about as much as you’d save by reducing future Social Security benefits ($175 BILLION) and far more savings than is achieved from the GOP’s pet proposal: raising the Medicare retirement age (which saves the government $125 BILLION, but costs the rest of us twice as much).
(For a very detailed explanation of these and other giveaways in the tax code, check out this paper from our colleagues at the Center for American Progress.)
Closing these tax loopholes will also help make sure that corporations aren’t gaming the system in order to avoid paying their fair share in taxes. It will also encourage companies to invest and create jobs here at home, rather than stashing money abroad.
BOTTOM LINE: Instead of cutting vital programs, it’s time to stop corporations rewarding corporations for shipping jobs overseas and gaming the system in order to avoid taxes.
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