Administration officials also defended a related plan to limit the value of deductions for people making $250,000 and up, as a way to help pay for the cost of overhauling the health-care system. The plan would cap the value of deductions at 28%. It has run into serious opposition on Capitol Hill. But a senior administration official said it could yet become a viable solution, if other ways to pay for health care can't be found. "Nobody rushes to do the hard things," the official said.
Nobody rushes? Right. Never let a castrastrophe go to waste.
Business leaders have been sharply critical of the administration's proposed crackdown on offshore tax avoidance, including limits on companies' ability to defer U.S. taxes on their overseas income, which was intended to put overseas operations of U.S. companies on the same footing as their foreign counterparts. The administration estimated it could raise a total of $210 billion in the decade from its crackdown.
"The proposed tax increases on U.S. companies by the Treasury threaten the jobs of tens of millions of U.S. workers and our future economic growth," said John Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable. "Adopting these changes will hamstring American competitiveness....We need to work together on comprehensive tax reform that will restore competitive balance for U.S. workers and companies."
That is one way to make the Europeans love us: Cripple our ability to compete with them, raising our already highest-in-the-industrialized-world corporate tax rates even higher. Who saw that coming? [Well, besides everyone who wasn't a fool.]
If someone was intentionally setting out to destroy our economy and businesses and to put us into a depression-rate unemployment situation, you couldn't find better ways to do it.
Intentional? It doesn't really matter. The outcome is the same.
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