Results for “corporate tax”

239 found

Here is the closest I find to a formal economic argument from the man.  In this WSJ Op-Ed,  if my eyes catch the fine print correctly, Paulson argued that the Bush dividend tax cuts will add 5 to 20 percent value to the stock market.  (Here is my source, though I cannot find a permalink.  And here is my source’s critique of the idea, although on this screen my old eyes cannot read it.) 

I’ve never understood the Paulson argument for two reasons.  First, at least in theory paying dividends should lower the value of the firm, relative to capital gains, given the higher dividend tax rate at the time.  Dividends would appear to shift around the form in which wealth is held, pulling it from one pocket to another, rather than increasing wealth.  I am the first to admit the entire topic of why dividends are paid is poorly understood, but that uncertainty does not militate in favor of targeting dividends for early and primary tax cuts.  I would sooner cut or abolish the corporate income tax, for instance.

Second, for any given level of government spending, the wealth effects of the dividend tax cut (if those effects exist in the first place) are a transfer to equity holders and from….?  Well, that remains to be seen.  Stay tuned for your forthcoming tax increase…Some of you, that is…

Addendum: I should make the broader point that this pick is probably very good news.

Follow these numbers, and the bold face is mine:

An example will illustrate the harmful effect of high
taxes on the income from savings and show how the tax reform could make
taxpayers unambiguously better off. Think about someone — call him Joe
— who earns an additional $1,000. If Joe’s marginal tax rate is 35%,
he gets to keep $650. Joe saves $100 of this for his retirement and
spends the rest. If Joe invests these savings in corporate bonds, he
receives a return of 6% before tax and 3.9% after tax. With inflation
of 2%, the 3.9% after-tax return is reduced to a real after-tax return
of only 1.9%. If Joe is now 40 years old, this 1.9% real rate of return
implies that the $100 of savings will be worth $193 in today’s prices
when Joe is 75. So Joe’s reward for the extra work is $550 of extra
consumption now and $193 of extra consumption at age 75.

But if the tax rate on the income from saving is
reduced to 15% as the tax panel recommends, the 6% interest rate would
yield 5.1% after tax and 3.1% after both tax and inflation. And with a
3.1% real return, Joe’s $100 of extra saving would grow to $291 in
today’s prices instead of just $193.

There are two lessons in this example, each of which
identifies a tax distortion that wastes potential output and therefore
unnecessarily lowers levels of real well-being. The first is that a tax
on interest income is effectively also a tax on the reward for extra
work, cutting the additional consumption at age 75 from $291 to just
$193. Because the high tax rate on interest income reduces the reward
for work (as well as the reward for saving), Joe makes choices that
lower his pretax earnings — fewer hours of work, less work effort,
less investment in skills, etc.

The second lesson that follows from the example is
that the tax on interest income substantially distorts the level of
future consumption even if Joe does not make any change in the amount
that he saves. With the same $100 of additional saving, the higher tax
rate reduces his additional retirement consumption from $291 to $193, a
one-third reduction. If Joe responds to the lower real rate of return
that results from the higher tax rate on interest by saving less, the
distortion of consumption is even greater. For example, if Joe would
save $150 out of the extra $1,000 of earnings when his real net return
is 3.1% (instead of saving $100 when the real net return is 1.9%), his
extra consumption at age 75 would be $436, more than twice as much as
with the 35% tax rate. But the key point is that Joe’s future
consumption would be substantially reduced by the higher tax rate even
if he does not change his savings.

Taken together, these two lessons imply that a lower
tax rate on interest income, combined with a small increase in the tax
on other earnings, could make Joe unambiguously better off while also
increasing government revenue. More specifically, if reducing the tax
on interest income from 35% to 15% had no effect on Joe’s earnings or
on his initial consumption spending, the government could collect the
same present value of tax revenue from Joe by raising the tax on his
$1,000 of extra earnings from $350 to $385. Although this would cut
Joe’s saving from $100 to $65 (if he keeps his initial consumption
spending unchanged), the higher net return on that saving would give
Joe the same consumption at age 75. In this way, Joe would be neither
better off nor worse off.

But experience shows that Joe would alter his behavior
in response to the lower tax rate. He would earn more at age 40 and
would save more for retirement. This change of behavior makes Joe
better off (or he wouldn’t do it) and the extra earnings and interest
income would raise government revenue above what it would be with a 35%
tax rate. So Joe would be unambiguously better off with the lower tax
rate on interest income and the government would collect more tax
revenue.

Here is the link.  Elsewhere from The Wall Street Journal, here is a piece on bargaining theory, thanks to Chris Masse for the pointer.

Following my Econoblog debate with Max Sawicky, Kevin Drum writes:

Basically, I’m on Max’s side: I think taxation of capital should be at roughly the same level as taxation of labor income. However, I believe this mostly for reasons of social justice, and it would certainly be handy to have some rigorous economic evidence to back up my noneconomic instincts on this matter. Something juicy and simple for winning lunchtime debates with conservative friends would be best. Unfortunately, Max punts, saying only, "As you know, empirical research seldom settles arguments."

Let me repeat the chosen comparison: capital taxes vs. gasoline taxes and no subsidies for housing.  That is a no-brainer.  But still you might be interested in the question of capital taxes vs. labor taxes.  Here are some points:

1. Supply-siders writing on capital taxation often make exaggerated claims.  Even if you like their conclusions, beware. 

2. Taxing dividends, corporate income, returns to savings, and capital gains all involve separate albeit related issues.  I am willing to consider zero for the lot.  Of that list, the corporate income tax is probably the biggest mess.  The capital gains tax is the least harmful.  The tax on dividends is the least well understood (in perfect markets theory, the level of dividends should not matter at all).  By the way, if you are worried about noise traders, a transactions tax is a better way to address this problem than a capital gains tax.

3. The U.S. currently lacks exorbitantly high levels of capital taxation.  Joel Slemrod estimates a rate of about fourteen percent, albeit with many complications and qualifications.  N.B.: We lower the rate of tax on capital by engaging in crazy-quilt and distortionary adjustments.  Nonetheless it is incorrect to argue "we have high rates of capital taxation and are doing fine, better than Europe."  Do not confuse real and nominal tax rates.

Take the capital gains tax.  Once you consider bequests and options on loss offsets, the effective rate of tax is arguably no more than five percent.  But it is still set up in a screwy way.  Bruce Bartlett points me to this short piece on real tax burdens on capital.

4. Peter Lindert has good arguments that favorable capital taxation has helped European economies finance their welfare states.

5. Larry Summers did the best empirical work on how abolishing capital income taxation would boost living standards. 

6. Encouraging savings will have a big payoff.  If you tax capital at zero, in the long run you will have much more of it.  This holds in most plausible views of the world.  Max’s examples aside, the supply curve for savings does not generally slope downwards; nor need you write me about various strange counterexamples from Ramsey models.  Sooner or later, more capital will kick in to mean a much higher standard of living.

7. Bruce Bartlett points me to this excellent CBO study.  It shows how much capital is taxed unevenly; one virtue of a zero rate is to eliminate many of those distortions in a simple way.

8. Remember those arguments about how more money doesn’t make you happier?  And we are all in a rat race where we work too hard to win a negative-sum relative status game?  I’ve never bought into them, but it’s funny how they suddenly stop coming from the left once the topic is capital vs. labor taxation.

9. The same excellent Slemrod paper (and he is no right-wing supply-side exaggerator) also suggests that the revenue lost from a zero rate on capital would be small.  N.B.: The references to this paper are the place to start your reading on this whole topic.

10. Kevin Drum’s belief in social justice should not necessarily lead him to look for arguments for taxing capital.  Even if we accept his normative views, there is the all-important question of incidence.  Taxing capital can hurt labor.  If you are truly keen to tax capital, this is a sign of a high time preference rate, not concern for the poor.

11. Some forms of human capital also should receive favorable tax treatment.  Vouchers for primary education and state universities are two examples.  I am also happy — in part for equity reasons — to subsidize human capital acquisition through an Earned Income Tax Credit.

12. What is really the difference between capital and labor?  Is it simply measured elasticities?  The size of each potential tax base?  The greater "future orientation" of capital and the possibility for compound returns?  All of the above?  How much does your answer depend on whether you view capital as a "fund" or as a "collection of capital goods"?

The bottom line: It all depends on the margin.  If your levels of government spending allow you to keep labor rates of taxation below 40 percent, I don’t see comparable gains from lowering tax rates on labor.  If you have equity concerns, express them through other policy instruments.  But if your marginal tax on labor is 65 percent and your tax rate on capital is 15 percent, cut the tax on labor first.

I know it hurts, but all of you non-right-wingers out there should consider a zero rate of taxation on capital.  Comments are open.

While Germany struggles with inflexible labour laws and high taxation, Austria has pushed through tax reforms that will bring rates down close to east European levels, to run alongside already business-friendly employment measures.

The results have been dramatic. Since January this year, when the first phase of Austria’s two-step reforms kicked in with big income tax cuts and some relief for small and medium-size companies, the country has enjoyed a rash of high-profile investment.

Businesses have been enticed not just by the current reforms but by the prospect of corporate rates falling from 34 to 25 per cent, or less than 22 per cent including allowances, from January next year as part of the second stage.

However, Austria’s success has been at Germany’s expense, as companies relocate from the German border region of Bavaria.

Here is the full story.

Iceland also has been defecting from the high-tax cartel:

After years of economic stagnation, unemployment and fiscal disarray, an Icelandic government led by Prime Minister David Oddsson implemented a series of Reaganesque reforms that have turned the economy around. In the 1990s, he reformed the income tax moving it towards a simpler and flatter structure. He also lowered the corporate marginal tax rate from 48 percent to 30 percent. And he also managed to contain spending, got rid of inflation, privatized large public companies and got the government out of the banking industry.

The results were astonishing. Unemployment dropped, the deficit disappeared, as did inflation, and Iceland is now one of the fastest growing countries in Europe–5 percent a year on average for the last 10 years. According to Mr. Oddsson, “This success has been achieved not in spite of extensive tax cuts but, to a great degree, because of them.”

In 2002, the corporate rate was cut again, from 30 percent to 18 percent. Today, Iceland has the third lowest corporate income tax rates of all the OECD countries behind Ireland 12.5 percent and Hungary 16 percent. And according to the Prime Minister, personal income tax will be reduced again this year by four percentage points, the income tax surcharge on the highest incomes will be removed and plans are formed to cut the corporate income tax rate further down to 15 percent.

Here is a previous MR post on the EU as a tax cartel.

Germany yesterday threw cold water on the festive mood ahead of this week’s European Union enlargement by telling its eastern neighbours that low corporate tax rates used to attract foreign investment were unacceptable.

Speaking only days before 10 new member states join the EU on May 1, most of them from eastern Europe, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said tax rates, often less than half those in Germany, were “not the way forward” in a united Europe.

Here is the full story. Here is a good article on the European tax cartel.

Germany does have a valid complaint that it sends subsidies to these lower-tax nations. Would any of you care to guess my vision of “the way forward”?