Corporate execs and corporate-indulging Republican pols are forever decrying what they classify as excessive corporate income taxes in the United States; that if we could only slash these taxes, corporate America would cease sending jobs overseas, would cease outsourcing, would produce and hire domestically, and therefore we'd all flourish as never before and thereby accelerate our inexorable arrival in that exceptionalist land of economic Eden.
That's the party line.
OK, how about this ...
Zero corporate taxes. No, really. Zero. Wipe 'em out, all of 'em. Most U.S. corporations, assuming they employ sober accountants, pay in reality little to no income taxes anyway, and the taxes they do pay are merely passed on to the consumer, meaning the corporation takes no sacrificial or patriotic hit.
But, supplanting the old corporate taxes would be hikes in the marginal, personal income tax rates -- substantial and undodgeable hikes of up to 60 or 70 or even 90 percent. If untethering corporations from the burdensome mire of income taxation is unquestionably the key to greater economic development, then corporate executives, after all, having always had that singular ideal uppermost in mind, surely wouldn't be troubled about picking up the slack from a personal angle -- right?
I've often thought this would be a dandy project to be undertaken by some fair-minded, progressive macroeconomist: determining how much of a hike in marginal, patriotically personal rates would compensate for the loss of those disgraceful, outsourcing, job-killing corporate rates.
But whatever it takes, whatever those new rates might be, I'm sure corporate executives and their Republican mouthpieces, concerned only about America's welfare, would be happy to sacrifice accordingly. Don't you think?