A new coalition of major corporate executives has formed to push for a lower corporate income tax rate. Called RATE (Reducing America’s Taxes Equitably), the group has been rather vague about how much to cut the corporate rate, but the fact that an influential group is organizing at all is good news. As I have argued in person for four years and in print for at least 3 1/2 years, I think there is actually a good case to be made for not just reducing, but completely eliminating, the corporate income tax. Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, to his credit, goes almost as far, calling for cutting the rate in half in general, and completely eliminating it for manufacturers. Megan McArdle at The Atlantic agrees with me that the whole thing should go.
But back to RATE, which isn’t so bold, but still is a valuable step in the right direction…. It really merits a full column, and will receive one here in the coming weeks. But as RATE notes at its web site, there really is no good political reason not to cut corporate rates, because leaders throughout the political spectrum have agreed it should be cut. The problem, I think, is that they keep holding it in abeyance, wanting to include the corporate rate cut in some “grand bargain” that includes all sorts of other taxing and spending changes.
This is the wrong way to go about it. Grand bargains are almost always the wrong way to go about things. Better to do things cafeteria style selection by selection. If everybody agrees on something, go with it — especially if it is good policy. Good policies shouldn’t wait on extraneous matters.
Anyway, again, there is far more to be said for RATE. But for now, we should welcome this group to the table and thank it for coming. It’s a coalition that could do some real good.
CFIF on Twitter
CFIF on YouTube