Former President Bill Clinton, who signed into law budget measures that led to the developed world’s highest corporate rate of 35 percent, wants it cut to encourage U.S. business to stop fleeing overseas.
What’s more, the husband of the leading 2016 Democratic presidential hopeful also called on Washington to stop elevating the tax charged on overseas earnings of U.S. corporations.
Clinton, in an interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick during his Clinton Global Initiative event, said when he raised taxes, the agreement was that the U.S. corporate tax rate would be about equal to the “average rate” of developed countries, not the top as it is now.
“We need tax reform,” he told Quick.
He also wants to end the practice of Washington charging the difference between what companies pay for taxes overseas and what Washington charges.
“We have to come to terms with the fact that everyone else in the world has stopped taxing on the difference between what their companies earn in a different country and at home,” Clinton argued.
While he said it is right for Treasury to raise as much as it can through taxes, while punishing companies doing business overseas, reform will actually help companies and the nation’s economy.
“If they can find a way to discourage people from moving overseas, they ought to, but the best discouragement is to reform taxes and to give incentives to repatriate now nearly $2 trillion dollars overseas, and to put some of into an infrastrastructure that will put the rest of America to work.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
