We Can Fix Corporate Taxes

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/opinion/campaign-stops/we-can-fix-corporate-taxes.html

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Our corporate tax code — the subject of my column this morning — is a mess.

It has the highest official rate of any advanced economy, which forces companies to devote time and effort to avoid paying that official rate. And it has so many loopholes that many companies end up paying relatively little, creating unfairness across industries and depriving Washington of important revenue. Without that revenue, the government has to collect more in taxes from middle-class and low-income households.

So what can be done?

The good news is that an overhaul of corporate tax code may be one of the first items that Congress takes up if Hillary Clinton is elected president. There are a few different options:

The first, and seemingly most likely, would be the classic approach to tax reform: lowering the rate and broadening the base. This approach would reduce the official 35 percent rate, while also eliminating loopholes. Edward Kleinbard, a tax expert at the University of Southern California, has laid out such an approach, as have the bipartisan duo of Senator Ron Wyden and Senator Dan Coats. (Wyden would be in line to chair the Senate Finance Committee if Democrats win Senate control.)

The second is an approach that the Center for American Progress, a think tank with close ties to Clinton, has promoted. The center has published a more radical plan from Alan Auerbach, one of the most oft-cited tax economists. He advocates giving up on trying to tax the overseas profits of American companies — which he considers a fool’s game — and instead more aggressively taxing the profits they earn here.

Notably, the leading proposal by House Republicans takes a related approach.

The most radical approach is to reduce corporate taxes sharply and instead tax individuals’ investment income much more heavily. As with the first two options, this one has support across ideological lines, having been proposed by Eric Toder of the Urban Institute and Alan Viard of the American Enterprise Institute.

All of these plans have benefits and drawbacks — and any of them would be better than the status quo.