What if Obama offered the republicans some tax-cuts?

[DetlefK]

Paul Ryan loves paying for tax-cuts by closing loop-holes. What if Obama came forward to recommend him on his approach and offered to do exactly that?
BUT, here's the kicker: In this deal Republicans get to pick the loop-holes and Obama gets to pick the tax-cuts. (If he goes first, he can frame the debate.)

Republicans have to identify the loop-holes they want closed and how much revenue that would create.
Then Obama would agree to cut taxes equal to that same amount of revenue.

1. Republicans would say no (because Obama seemed to like their idea).
2. They would have to attack tax-cuts.
3. They would have to attack a deal that would lower taxes in a bipartisan fashion as an evil plot to make them look bad by forcing them to say No.
4. Paul Ryan's budget would be dead for good.



Yeah, I know, it would be a pure political power-game and wouldn't resolve any actual problems, but it could deepen the fracture of the republican faction in the House (are tax-cuts bad if Obama offers them?), paving the way for further violation of the Hastert-rule.

[JPZenger]

1. Republicans want to save loopholes for tax reform

Yes, as part of a grand bargain, Obama should agree to some tax reform that would lower the sticker price for corporate tax rates. Some corporations (such as Best Buy) pay an enormous amount of US corporate taxes, while other corporations (such as GE) manage to avoid paying much at all.

If we lower the overall corporate tax rate, but close the loopholes, we can meet a republican objective while also raising some additional revenue. It would also allow the Republicans to save face. However, there are many corporations that would fight it, including those that profit from tricks in the tax code that encourage outsourcing.

[patrice]

3. In the interest of perhaps seeding some new entrepreneurs lower down the scale, what do

you think of raising the bottom of the top corporate brackets? I don't know what the range of incomes is in those corporate tax rate brackets are, but if it's anything like the top personal income brackets, the bottom there is something a little less than $300K, relative to the top of those same brackets which is absolutely astronomical. Is there a comparable situation in corporate taxes? It seems that the low end isn't anything nearly the same quantitatively, in its effect upon the economy as a whole, as the top and yet they're taxed at nearly the same rates??

If they changed they lowered the rates at the low end of the corporate income brackets, would that be enough to free up some entrepreneurial capital? and, hopefully, that would be authentically NEW capital, not just re-investment in whatever the top end of those corporate are built out of.

I'd swear the Progressive Caucus floated something like this, briefly, in late 2010, but it disappeared in the broughaha over the budget, ending DADT, and extending the Bush Tax Cuts.

[JPZenger]

5. Many small corporations pay no federal income tax

Most small corporations don't pay federal corporate income tax because their owners are also employees. For example, a corporation can pay their employee-owner bonuses throughout the year so that at the end of the year, the company shows little profit that is subject to tax.

[AndyA]

2. Some tax cuts would be good, I think

Tax cuts for business to create permanent jobs here in America, they get a bigger cut if they bring back jobs that were outsourced overseas at some point.

That would need to be balanced with closing loopholes to businesses for outsourcing jobs or moving facilities overseas.

I don't think all tax cuts are bad, but I think they should generate something positive that would ultimately grow our economy, and grow it from the bottom up. We already know that trickle down doesn't work.

[jsr]

4. More corporate tax cuts, please

Corporate profits are at an all-time low, and corporations are running out of cash and cash equivalents.

[99Forever]

6. Sounds like more Kabuki Theater to me.

As if we don't get enough already.

JMO

[MadHound]

7. How about Obama move away from this conversation altogether,

He seems to have bought into the notion that we've got to fix the debt/deficit problem right now. We don't, because our debt/deficit isn't a problem. Payments on our debt amount to less than one percent of US GDP.

The real problem is that millions of people are still unemployed, millions more are underemployed or simply given up looking for work. How about we borrow a trillion or so(and with interest rates practically at zero, now is the time to be borrowing), and institute a true WPA style stimulus package. One that would invest in our infrastructure(an investment in our future), our education(another investment in our future), and would put millions to work.

Put people to work, put a paycheck in their pocket, the economy grows again, and we can easily grow our way out of the debt. Problem solved.

Dicking around with tax cuts, spending cuts and austerity programs only insures that our economy is going to stagnate, and millions upon millions of Americans are going to be living in despair.

[TheKentuckian]

8. We have a revenue problem.