JOB EXPORTING CORPORATIONS PUSHING FOR TAX BREAK

By Travis Waldron

http://www.nationofchange.org/

As the Amer­i­can econ­omy con­tin­ues to strug­gle through a slug­gish re­cov­ery, some of the na­tion’s largest cor­po­ra­tions are refusing to disclose “a num­ber they don’t want any­one to know”: the num­ber of work­ers they em­ploy in the United States ver­sus the num­ber em­ployed over­seas.
Among the com­pa­nies are sev­eral that are ac­tively lob­by­ing Con­gress for an­other spe­cial tax break. Apple and Pfizer are mem­bers of Win America, a group of cor­po­ra­tions lob­by­ing for a tax repa­tri­a­tion hol­i­day that would allow them to bring over­seas prof­its back to the United States at a much lower tax rate than the 35 per­cent they would nor­mally pay. But those com­pa­nies, among oth­ers, remain secretive about where their actual job creation is taking place, as the Wash­ing­ton Post re­ports:
So se­cre­tive are these com­pa­nies that they hand the fig­ure over to gov­ern­ment sta­tis­ti­cians on the con­di­tion that of­fi­cials will re­lease only an ag­gre­gate num­ber. The lat­est data show that multi­na­tion­als cut 2.9 mil­lion jobs in the United States and added 2.4 mil­lion over­seas be­tween 2000 and 2009.
De­spite out­sourc­ing trends, the com­pa­nies con­tinue to push for the tax hol­i­day (sup­ported by, among oth­ers, GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates Mitt Romney and Rick Perry) under the guise of do­mes­tic job cre­ation, even though ev­i­dence from past hol­i­days in­di­cates the com­pa­nies would be un­likely to use the tax break to cre­ate jobs.

In 2004, cor­po­ra­tions used repa­tri­ated money largely to pay dividends and buy stock and, after the hol­i­day, stashed even more money overseas under the as­sump­tion that Con­gress would ap­prove an­other such hol­i­day in the fu­ture, al­low­ing them to avoid pay­ing taxes yet again.
The 2004 hol­i­day “didn't accomplish its stated goals of bring­ing jobs and in­vest­ment to the U.S.,” said Kristin Forbes, a pro­fes­sor at the Mass­a­chu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy and a for­mer mem­ber of Pres­i­dent Bush’s coun­cil of eco­nomic ad­vis­ers. After re­ceiv­ing the tax break in 2004, many of the WinAmer­ica cor­po­ra­tions, in­clud­ing Pfizer, laid off thousands of workers in 2005 and 2006.
In the end, the hol­i­day would re­sult in yet an­other give­away to cor­po­ra­tions that are al­ready paying the low effective tax rates while they cre­ate jobs over­seas. That’s some­thing law­mak­ers should take into con­sid­er­a­tion when dis­cussing the pos­si­bil­ity of an­other hol­i­day, Rochester In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy pro­fes­sor Ron Hira told the Post. “Should you lis­ten to the kind of ad­vice these com­pa­nies have about how to grow the econ­omy when their record and their model in­di­cates they’ve cut jobs?” Hira asked. “Or should we talk to peo­ple who ac­tu­ally do cre­ate jobs in the United States?”