Warren Buffett: ‘It Is A Myth’ That U.S. Corporate Taxes Are High

[xchrom]

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/27/432749/buffett-corporate-tax-myth/

2012 GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal today to lay out his economic plan, reiterating his desire to cut the corporate tax rate in order to “restore America’s competitiveness.” During an interview on CNBC, billionaire investor Warren Buffett, in response to Santorum’s piece, noted that is is actually “a myth” that America’s corporate taxes are high. “Corporate taxes are not strangling American competitiveness,” Buffett explained, even bringing a chart to prove his point:

'The interesting thing about the corporate rate is that corporate profits, as a percentage of GDP last year were the highest or just about the highest in the last 50 years. They were ten and a fraction percent of GDP. That’s higher than we’ve seen in 50 years. The corporate taxes as a percentage of GDP were 1.2 percent, $180 billion. That’s just about the lowest we’ve seen. So our corporate tax rate last year, effectively, in terms of taxes paid for the United States, was around 12 percent, which is well below those existing in most of the industrialized countries around the world. So it is a myth that American corporations are paying 35 percent or anything like it…Corporate taxes are not strangling American competitiveness.'

[CAPHAVOC]

1. Tax him!

90% Tax on over 1 Billion. The Damned .001% like him are screwing us. Occupy Buffett!

[pampango]

2. As Buffett says: Effective corporate tax rate is 12% (due to loopholes) well below progressive

countries.

The nominal 35% rate could be lowered a little and, if you got rid of loopholes, the effective tax rate would actually increase.

[abowsh]

3. That rate is easy for Berkshire Hathaway to obtain, but not Joe's Mufflers

And that is the problem. When you have a team of accountants and lawyers with billions of dollars at your disposal, its easy to get your corporate tax rate that low. These are the companies that wrote the code, they wrote it in their favor.

While not an example of the tax code, here is a perfect example of large corporations using their influence to crush small business competition.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-08-05/news/chi-local-ice-cream-makers-could-be-shut-down-by-state-20110805_1_kris-swanberg-nice-cream-strawberry-syrup

"She says that a couple of weeks ago a representative from the Illinois Department of Public Health came to Logan Square Kitchen and informed her she’d have to shut down if she did not get something called "a dairy license."

Swanberg and others in her field had operated for years now without ever hearing of such a thing and, indeed, they say, the City’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, to whom they applied for business licenses, never informed them they would need one to operate.

To get this license Swanberg wrote, in an email, she would have to:

"Work out of our own space. Currently we work out of the Logan Square Kitchen."
"Have our product tested once a month for bacterial levels."
"Change all of our packaging and labels to meet state standards."
"Purchase a pasteurizer, which from what the state tells me will be about $40,000 or use a pre-made ice cream mix."

I reference this, because I have a friend who works for the Illinois Department of Health, and while this law was on the books for ages, it was largely ignored. Until, Breyers found out about it. They were making calls and putting out "grass roots petitions" all over Chicago to get these small ice cream makers put out of business. I know they closed a couple, but I haven't heard much about it lately. This just shows how we let big business control public policy.