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Town Square Forums Tax Issues Beyond Palo Alto
Ted Rudow III, MA, a member of the Palo Alto High School community,
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 and the audience; it’s because of all these favors being bought from politicians. How we could raise a trillion dollars a year—that would double the revenue we get, it’s equal 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 are the vast majority of wealth in America, they pay an effective tax rate of about 15 percent of their profits.