Corporate tax repatriation bill falsely positioned as a "jobs bill"

They're calling it a tax "holiday," and some holiday it is.

Trillions of dollars that corporations earned and parked overseas (where they "delay" paying U.S. taxes on it) are being invited back into the country by the promise of a lowered tax rate on all money repatriated. The discussion starts at 5%.

That's correct — if you bring your money back home, you can pay 5% tax on it (more or less, not including deductions and loopholes). As Groucho used to say, "Cut me off a piece of that."

Here's Matt Taibbi discussing this on Keith Olbermann's Countdown. Great segment.



"Rewarding companies for off-shoring their profits" and for keeping their expenses in the high-tax states. The NeoLiberal Party (and project) at work. (By the way, and apropos of none of this, is the Clinton daughter still a hedge-fund employee? Maybe not; just wondering.)

Taibbi is right (starting at about 4:40) — this is the big one in lost revenue. Perhaps $70 billion per year in tax collections since 2004, gone forever.

It's called the "Freedom to Invest Act" by the way. Nice one; the only freedom the NeoLiberal Party cares about.

For those who want something to ready, here's Taibbi's latest write-up (short, clear, Taibbi-esque) on this deal.

And if you really want to stay ahead of the action, watch for Barack Obama's reaction. Just sayin'.

[Update: For more on Taibbi's point about how this connects to corporate stock buy-backs, see this follow-on post.]

GP