Corporate Taxes

San Mateo Daily Journal
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Corporate income taxes
March 05, 2011,
Letter
Editor,
Well, corporate income taxes in this country are one-third lower than they were in 2000, even though corporate profits are up 60 percent and corporations have almost $2 trillion in cash. They’re approaching $7,000 of cash for every man, woman and child in the United States. They’re not investing this money. They’re not creating jobs. They are hoarding this money that they have pulled out of the economy. It’s one of the reasons we’re in so much trouble.
Now, as to the argument that our tax rate is too high, it is because of all these special favors. The reason the tax code has grown and grown and grown and grown and grown isn’t because of people like you and me; it’s because of all these favors being bought from politicians. We could raise a trillion dollars a year — that would double the revenue we get, equivalent to the revenue we get from the individual income tax — by shutting down loopholes and favors for businesses, particularly the oil and gas and pharmaceutical industries. The fact is, the very largest corporations, the ones who hold the vast majority of wealth in America, pay an effective tax rate of about 15 percent of their profits.


Ted Rudow III, MA
Palo Alto