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■Parttani» CObserurr
N o vem b er 16. 2011
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Just Say No to Corporate Greed
Let’s not hurt
children and
families again
by
M arian W right E delman
Repatriation. It’s a w ord many
school children probably haven’t
yet learned to define or even seen
very often outside o f spelling bees.
But when it com es to corporate
taxes, repatriation is the corner­
stone o f an idea that has the po­
tential to severely hurt m illions o f
children and parents and widen
the already historic and uncon­
scionable gap betw een the rich
and the poor.
In its sim plest definition, repa­
triation is bringing something back
to its country o f origin— returning
it back hom e. One o f the solutions
to the jobs crisis being proposed
by som e o f our Congressional
leaders, and lobbied for aggres­
sively by som e o f the country’s
richest corporations, is a rehash o f
an old experim ent: enacting a re­
patriation tax holiday that w ould
tem porarily allow U .S.based m ul­
tinational co m p an ies to bring
hom e profits they currently hold
overseas at a 5.25 percent tax
rate, instead o f the usual 35 per-
cent corporate tax rate.
U n d er cu rren t tax
law, multinational com ­
panies generally pay no
U.S. corporate taxes on
foreign incom e until
Ihose profits are brought back to
the U.S.
As the C enter on Budget and
Policy Priorities explains, “T his
effectively allow s such firm s to
defer paym ent o f the U.S. corpo­
rate incom e tax on their overseas
profits indefinitely, even though
they m ay obtain an im m ediate tax
deduction for m any expenses in­
curred in supporting the sam e
overseas investm ents. This can
produce a negative U.S. corpo­
rate incom e tax— that is, a net
governm ent subsidy— for over­
seas operations. In addition to
causing the federal governm ent to
lose tax revenue, this structure
gives m ultinationals a significant
incentive to shift econom ic activ­
ity— as well as their reported prof-
its— overseas.”
The argum ent for the repatria­
tion holiday is that giving corpora­
tions a huge incentive to bring
profits back right now— in the
form o f an enorm ous tax break—
would bring billions o f dollars back
to the U.S. econom y that w ould
be reinvested and provide a big
stim ulus to our econom y. C orpo­
rate proponents and their C on­
gressional bullies argue this will
create desperately needed jobs.
But the last tim e this was tried,
under a 2004 Bush A dm inistra­
tion plan, it d id n ’t w ork out that
way. Instead, as C B P P points out,
“T he evidence show s that firms
m ostly used the repatriated earn­
ings not to invest in U.S. jo b s or
growth, but for purposes that C on­
gress sought to prohibit, such as
repurchasing their ow n stock and
paying bigger dividends to their
shareholders. M oreover, m any
firm s actually laid off large num ­
bers o f U.S. w orkers even as they
reaped multi-billion-dollar benefits
from the tax holiday and passed
them on to shareholders.”
M any econom ists and scholars
believe that if corporations get
their w ay and get another repa­
triation holiday, history will repeat
itself— and once again the corpo­
rations and their shareholders, not
A m erican workers, fam ilies, and
children, will be the only winners.
T he nonpartisan congressional
Joint C om m ittee on Taxation has
estim ated the holiday w ould cost
the federal governm ent about $80
billion over 10 years in lost rev­
enue.
The Economic Policy Institute’s
A ndrew Fieldhouse puts it this
way: “W hile there are num erous
jo b creation proposals that would
m eaningfully low er unem ploy­
ment, som e law m akers are push­
ing counterproductive policies dis­
guised as jo b creation packages.
The proposed repeat o f the cor­
porate tax repatriation holiday is
one such w olf in sheep’s cloth-
ing.
W hen the nation is already fac­
ing a jo b s crisis, and m any C on­
gressional leaders are threatening
to slash nutrition, child care, and
other safety net program s that
children and fam ilies rely on as a
m eans o f balancing the budget,
revisiting a failed idea instead o f
com ing up with real solutions and
real jo b s is a threat children and
fam ilies and our country cannot
afford.
A s the O ccupy W all Street
protestors are shouting, “Just say
no to corporate greed” and to
C ongress people w ho continue to
raid from the poor and children to
curry favor and cam paign contri­
butions from the rich.
Marian Wright Edelman is
president o f the Children's De­
fense Fund.