The Corporate Dollars Behind Congress' Push For A Huge Corporate Tax Holiday

A number of major American corporations, as a part of a larger campaign called WinAmerica, are currently pushing for a massive new corporate tax holiday. WinAmerica is calling for a tax repatriation holiday that would allow corporations to bring cash they have stashed overseas back to America at a dramatically reduced tax rate.

While this idea may sound appealing, its application in 2004 blew a huge hole in the budget deficit and failed to result in significant investment or job creation (which the corporations had insisted it would). At the end of the day, the policy rewarded corporations and harmed the U.S. Treasury.

Currently, there is a bill before the House of Representatives — the "Freedom To Invest Act 2011" — that would enact such a holiday. ThinkProgress investigated the co-sponsors of this legislation and U.S. senators who have expressed sympathy with a repatriation holiday, and found that they've received thousands of dollars from the same corporations bankrolling the WinAmerica campaign.

In addition to the Win America campaign and a number of members of the U.S. Congress, General Electric (GE) CEO Jack Welch recently called for a repatriation holiday. This is particularly ironic given GE's knack for avoiding taxes altogether.

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• repatriation
• tax holiday
• corporations

[nicfillion]

What's this ridiculous music background?

[AssRapingHorseCock]

@nicfillion This was originally supposed to be a porn video, but then they found out nobody wanted to see these politicians in bed with lobbyists.

[Costalfisherman]

Society is, always has been and always will be a structure for the exploitation and oppression of the majority through systems of political force dictated by an élite, enforced by thugs, uniformed or not, and upheld by a willful ignorance and stupidity on the part of the very majority whom the system oppresses. R Morgan

[LaughingLefty]

It would be better without the music, but thanks.

[leestauf]

Lefties! I'll bet if your spouse charged all your credit cards to the limit, was giving large portions of your pay check to the neighbors because it made them feel good, kept getting your credit card limits raised in order to charge more, had spent all your retirement savings and then told you they had a plan to stop your approaching bankruptcy, and that plan was to spend more money, you would be ALL FOR IT RIGHT!!? That is EXACTLY what is happening to this country!

[kyrat]

need to remember to boycott & tell these companies we're doing so becuz of their shady pratices. Money moved from major banks to credit unions. Using Ask.com or other search engines instead of Google, while they're pushing this, etc. etc.

[spiritofbeauty8]

IT'S OFFICIAL!!! IT'S A LIE THAT LOW TAXES FOR BUSINESS CREATE JOBS!

WE NOW HAVE THE LOWEST FEDERAL AND STATE TAXES & GUESS WHAT,

NO JOBS.  NEXT TIME YOUR CONGRESSMAN TELL'S YOU INCREASING TAXES ON CORPORATIONS IS A JOB KILLER, TELL HIM HOW COME THE ECONOMY IS WHAT IT IS. LETS GO BACK TO HIGH TAXES LIKE CLINTON DID, WE HAD A BUDGET EXCESS. THEN BUSH LOWERS AND TAXES AND

WHAMOO, WE CAN'T AFFORD ANTI-POVERTY PROJECTS ANYMORE, AND THE WEALTHY WANT TO CALL THEM ENTITLMENTS AND GET RID OF THEM.

[TheClosestranger00]

its the old find lucky lady street card game but corporate style and scale(mass amounts of money not no 5$ bet) its a scam! no tax holiday! return to the 1930s rate! verify then trust Reagan had it backwards.

[ttspersonalmis]

The idea is sound, if it came with "strings" that mandated corps to do the things that the incentive is supposed to entice them to do, not to mention penalize them for moving it offshore again.

Also, corps taxes (excluding payroll) only make up about 8% of the federal tax revenue. So, it's not like doing this, again, provided it is done with conditions to ensure the outcome, would represent a big loss in revenue.



[optionsupdate]

the top 5% own about 90% of all corporations so therefore this is s transfer of wealth from bottom 95% to the top 5%