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US Corporations have long been competitive with the EU and Asia
Not as much as they are now, thanks to the Trump tax cuts.
because of the advantageous "effective" tax rate
Wrong. The graduated nature of the previous corporate income tax only substantially helped smaller companies. Larger corporations were paying an effective tax rate that was far above the 18%-21% rate in Europe and Asia and far above the new rate of 21%.
You realize that the new corporate income tax is *not* graduated, right? It is a flat 21%, regardless of the corporation's size.
And I repeat the point that the Trump tax cuts ended the decades-long foreign income loophole, which allowed U.S. corporations to park billions of dollars overseas and to avoid taxes on income earned overseas. Liberals had been calling for ending this loophole for decades, but few liberals have given Trump credit for finally doing this, because if more people knew about this aspect of the Trump tax cuts, they would not so easily swallow the liberal talking point that the tax cuts mainly helped the rich.
By the way, the JFK tax cuts reduced the top marginal rate, the rate paid by rich folks, from 91% to 70%. So JFK gave the rich a 23% tax cut. Trump cut the top marginal rate by 6.6%.
(and through creative book-keeping by some corporations, the Gov't actually sends many large US corporations massive tax refunds every year).
Humm, I'd like to see data on that claim.
And are you counting the tens of billions of dollars that American corporations pay in state and local income taxes and property taxes?
I work for a rather large corporation, and in previous years I worked for two much larger corporations. I receive pay and benefits that very few small companies would be able to match. The last thing I want to see is my company's corporate tax rate jacked back up to 35%. I think a flat rate of 21% is more than enough.
Trump's cut for the corporations (and the billionaires) means the middle class have to eventually shoulder more tax burden.
Oh, just hogwash. This is Marxist hogwash. The Trump tax cut for corporations simply brought our corporate income tax rate down to the level that is common in Europe and Asia. You might want to remember that our corporations employ millions of Americans and pay billions of dollars each year to contribute to their employees' 401K funds, health insurance premiums, payroll taxes, and unemployment insurance. You realize that your employer pays half of your payroll tax for you, and that your employer pays into your state's unemployment insurance fund on your behalf (at no cost to you) each month, right?
Most people want a job that provides a decent salary and good benefits, including a matching 401K, health insurance, sick leave, and vacation time. Well, who do you suppose provides the majority of those kinds of jobs? Mom and Pop stores? No, corporations provide most of those kinds of jobs.
Let us look at the rate cuts for individual income taxes in the Trump tax cuts to dispel the liberal myth that they mainly helped the rich. Keep in mind that most Americans fall into the second, third, and fourth brackets:
1st bracket -- No change (since they already paid no income taxes, and Trump increased the Earned Income Tax Credit)
2nd bracket ($20K-$79K) -- 20% reduction (from 15% to 12%)
3rd bracket ($79K-$168K -- 12% reduction (from 25% to 22%)
4th bracket ($168K-$318K) -- 14.2% reduction (from 28% to 24%)
5th bracket ($318-$410K) -- 3.1% reduction (from 33% to 32%)
6th bracket ($410K-$610K) -- No reduction (stayed at 35%)
7th bracket ($610K-plus) -- 6.6% (from 39.6% to 37%)
As you can see, the second, third, and fourth brackets, where most Americans fall, got the largest rate cuts. My monthly net income rose by over $200 thanks to the tax cuts. So please, Democrats, keep your hands off them.
I notice you said nothing about the fact that the Trump taxes imposed a $10K cap on SALT deductions (state and local taxes), which has taken a sizable bite out of the wallets of the rich. For someone like me, who pays about $12K in SALT each year, the cap has meant little. But for a person who makes, say, $325K per year and pays $35K or more in SALT, the cap has cost them several thousand dollars per year for the last two years, and will continue to do so.
Unless Biden reverses things, or the tax code is rewritten, but the empowered and elites don't want that.
So you want to jack up the tax rate on our corporations back up to 35%?! Really? Why would you want to do that? You might want to talk to the millions of employees of those corporations and ask them if they would like to see their employer's taxes jacked up by 40% (14 percentage points). Why would you want to do such a thing? Do you not want American corporations to grow, to hire more people, to keep paying for benefits?
I seriously, seriously doubt that Biden would be so foolish as to undo the Trump tax cuts. He might do what Bill Clinton did to the Reagan tax cuts and what Obama did to the Bush tax cuts, i.e., raise the rate for the top brackets somewhat but leave the tax cuts for the other brackets intact. And I hope to high heaven that, if Biden wins, he doesn't undo the great growth we've seen in our business sector by jacking up the corporate income tax rate back to 35% or to anything close to that.
As many economists have pointed out, taxing corporate income is a counter-productive form of double taxation that negatively affects everyone in each corporation. Corporations already pay half of all of their employees' payroll taxes, in addition to tens of billions of dollars in state income taxes and local property taxes. Even the owners and top executives in corporations already pay taxes on their salaries. So turning around and taxing a corporation again on its profits makes no sense, if you are interested in enabling the company to grow as much as possible.
