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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Obama's latest phony tax plan

President Obama is at it again. This time he is proposing an overhaul of the corporate tax structures in the USA. As is his usual practice, Obama has not put forth a proposal; instead, we have gotten another speech. It is true that the speech was followed with talking points memoranda, but the actual proposals were nowhere to be found. We hear that Obama wants to "close loopholes". Which ones? Obama has not told us. We hear that Obama wants to reduce the tax burden on manufacturing. Exactly how will that be done? Obama has not told us. We hear that Obama wants to grab some of the cash that corporations have in accounts located outside the USA and that overseas profits are going to be subject to a minimum tax as well. Here we got a few more details, but not enough to understand the actual proposal. Indeed, based on the little we have been told, it sounds like the new tax proposals will drive American multinationals to re-incorporate outside the USA and move their headquarters overseas as well. This used to happen quite a bit; for example, Tyco was nominally headquartered in the off shore in order to avoid tax problems. How can Obama think that it will help the country to give big business the incentive to leave the USA?

The real truth is that what we are hearing today is a campaign strategy. Obama wants to be able to claim that he is reforming the tax code. Well where has he been for four years? Why did he do nothing during the two years when he and the Obamacrats had total control of Congress? And why is it that we never get the details of these supposed programs? The simple answer is that Obama's plan is a phony, a ploy. He really has got to go!

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