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“Taxing Imports, Not Exports,” Steve Lohr, NYTimes, 12/13/16

December 13, 2016 by

“President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to protect and create American manufacturing jobs, even threatening high tariffs on imports to help achieve that goal. So far, though, his plan seems to lean heavily on one-at-a-time deals, like the one struck late last month to save jobs at the Carrier plant in Indianapolis.

But proponents of a more far-reaching approach say it could achieve many of Mr. Trump’s goals without tariff walls or presidential jawboning: a sweeping overhaul of the corporate tax system that embraces a concept endorsed by House Republican leaders in their blueprint for tax reform, announced in late June.

“It would be the biggest change in business tax law ever in the United States,” said Martin A. Sullivan, the chief economist at Tax Analysts, a nonprofit tax research organization and publisher. “It might actually work, and I don’t think it’s a partisan issue.”

A central idea is that goods would be taxed based on where they were consumed rather than where they were produced, meaning that imports would be taxed by Washington while exports would not. Tax experts call this a destination-based consumption tax.

This would be a sharp departure for the United States in a number of ways, but taxing imports but not exports is in step with nearly all of America’s trading partners, which have so-called value-added taxes. The import-and-export tax treatment is known as border adjustment.”

Filed Under: Featured Article Tagged With: , destination tax, , ,

Mankiw, N. Gregory, “One Way to Fix the Corporate Tax: Repeal It,” The New York Times, 08/23/14

August 23, 2014 by

“Perhaps the boldest and best response to corporate inversions is to completely rethink the basis of corporate taxation. The first step is to acknowledge that corporations are more like tax collectors than taxpayers. The burden of the corporate tax is ultimately borne by people — some combination of the companies’ employees, customers and shareholders. After recognizing that corporations are mere conduits, we can focus more directly on the people.

A long tradition in political philosophy and economics, dating back about four centuries to Thomas Hobbes, suggests that the amount that a person consumes is the right basis for taxation. A broad-based consumption tax asks a person to contribute to support the government according to how much of the economy’s output of goods and services he or she enjoys. It doesn’t matter whether the resources for that consumption come from wages, interest, rent, dividends, capital gains or inheritance.

So here’s a proposal: Let’s repeal the corporate income tax entirely, and scale back the personal income tax as well. We can replace them with a broad-based tax on consumption. The consumption tax could take the form of a value-added tax, which in other countries has proved to be a remarkably efficient way to raise government revenue.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/upshot/one-way-to-fix-the-corporate-tax-repeal-it.html?emc=eta1&_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

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Improve Obamacare: Single-Payer (VAT) & Multiple Providers

October 1, 2013 by

In 2005, The New England Journal of Medicine published an article titled “Healthcare Vouchers, A Proposal for Universal Coverage” by Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD and Victor Fuchs, PhD.  At the time, Dr. Emanuel was Chief of the Department of Bioethics at National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Fuchs was Professor of Economics and of Health Research and Policy at Stanford University.

(This proposal was updated and presented in detail in 2008 in a book: “Universal Healthcare, Guaranteed, A Simple Secure Solution for America,” Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Public Affairs, Jackson, TN.)

The Universal Healthcare, Guaranteed plan called for eliminating – for corporations – the direct burden of healthcare insurance, and providing healthcare vouchers to be used in a health insurance exchange that could also include Medicare.  The vouchers were to be funded by a dedicated Value Added Tax.  This method of funding the vouchers would have broad economic benefits.

The Value Added Tax is monetarily equivalent to a sales tax.  It differs in that VAT is added at each stage of production and distribution rather than only at the retail level.  Credits are taken for taxes paid at each stage, so the tax does not cascade (no taxes on taxes).  Unlike a retail sales tax, however, VAT is recognized under GATT rules (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) as a border-adjustable tax, i.e., subtracted from exports and added to imports.  This feature eliminates the burden of government expenditures from the price/value competition of goods and services crossing international borders.  Both domestically produced goods and imports are taxed the same.

The U.S. does not employ a VAT, which results in a competitive disadvantage in trade.  All our trading partners have a significant portion of taxes paid by VAT’s, so goods exported from those countries are coming in cheaper by the percentage VAT.  How much cheaper?  Cars from Germany, 17% cheaper.  Goods from China, 19% cheaper.  The Emanuel/Fuchs plan for healthcare vouchers would require a VAT of around 12% to cover everyone under 65 (with Medicare still covering those older). At 12%, the healthcare VAT percentage would be about the average percent of our trading partners’ VAT’s.  Imports would be equally burdened by the cost of U.S. healthcare, and our exports would no longer carry the cost of healthcare in their prices.  We could expect domestic production to be more competitive at home and abroad, fueling economic and job growth.  

The VAT would replace healthcare insurance provided by companies and individual insurance premiums.  Many corporations currently pay around 15% of wages for healthcare insurance premiums.  Ford Motor Company, for example, spends more for healthcare premiums than it does for the steel in its cars.  Again, companies would be freed of this direct insurance cost. 

But would the burden of the VAT be fairly distributed?  Some companies would increase wages to assist employees, and competition suggests those who did not would not attract the best workers.  Health insurance by companies became a method of competition in the marketplace for employees when wages were frozen during World War II, and companies added to this benefit to remain competitive.  Government, too, could assist with VAT payments through the EITC (subsidy to the poor and lower wage earners).

Emanuel and Fuchs addressed that question: “Some people reflexively reject a value-added tax as regressive. However, the distributional impact of the voucher proposal requires looking at the benefits as well as the tax burden. All things considered, the program is progressive, since it implicitly subsidizes the poor. It is not an accident that countries such as Norway and Sweden, which provide universal health coverage, make substantial use of value added taxes to fund social programs.” 

There is resentment in some quarters about the expensive cost of free services in hospital emergency rooms and obstetrics units.  But, with a VAT paying for healthcare benefits, everyone would be contributing towards these benefits.  And, since wealthier consumers purchase more goods and services, they would be paying for a greater proportion of the VAT receipts, adding to progressivity.  Furthermore, because the VAT would be dedicated to healthcare vouchers, the public would have a visual check on the cost of demanding more medical services, and, perhaps, be somewhat self-limiting.

So, why didn’t Congress embrace the Emanuel/Fuchs plan?  Republicans have been wary of introducing another tax base that would be used as a money machine for bigger government. Some Democrats fear VAT would be too regressive.  Larry Summers put it this way: “The reason the U.S. doesn’t have a VAT is because liberals think it’s regressive and conservatives think it’s a money machine. We’ll get a VAT when they reverse their positions.” 

The Affordable Care Act will educate the public on the use of healthcare exchanges.  A smart Congress would do well to explore a dedicated Value Added Tax to fund healthcare vouchers used in the insurance exchanges.

(See the 9-minute video to learn how VAT would grow the economy and jobs – including a clear explanation by Bill Clinton)

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , Emanuel, , Obamacare, , ,

Sullivan, Martin A., “U.S. Tax Exceptionalism,” TaxAnalysts.com, 09/16/13

September 21, 2013 by

“The United States is the only nation of any significant size without a VAT. The United States also has the world’s highest corporate tax rate. Those two facts are not unrelated. Despite ever-tightening budgets, governments around the world over the last two decades have steadily reduced their corporate tax rates. How were they able to do this? They made up lost corporate tax revenues by relying more heavily on their VATs…

…For economists this is a no-brainer. The corporate tax-with its arbitrary and excessive burden on the profits of certain businesses-is our most damaging tax. A broad-based consumption tax, like a VAT — which unlike the income tax is not inherently biased against saving and investment — causes the least harm to the economy. Replacing corporate tax revenues with consumption tax revenues is the most straightforward way to improve America’s tax competitiveness. Everything else is just nibbling around the edges.

Of course, that move would make a tax system less progressive. To address this, economists suggest providing rebates to low-income households to make up for their disproportionate burden. Another idea that does not get enough discussion is to simply accept that a more competitive tax system will become more regressive and to use additional VAT funds to expand social programs to help America’s struggling poor and middle class.

It is not the political left, however, that is the main obstacle to the U.S. adopting a VAT. Conservatives are dead set against the idea even though they hate the income tax and at every opportunity seek to reduce taxes on saving. That is because they fear the VAT is a money machine that, once in place, will make it too easy for government to expand to European levels. In contrast, conservatives and business groups outside the United States loudly endorse the expansion of VATs as good replacements for corporate taxes. Whether or not those fears are well founded, we must recognize that as long as we adopt the approach of relying primarily on income and corporate taxes to fund our government-whatever size it is-we are stifling U.S. competitiveness while the rest of the world moves ahead.”

http://www.taxanalysts.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/MSUN-9BLEG5?OpenDocument

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Brooks, David, “Let’s Talk About X,” The New York Times, 11/30/12

December 2, 2012 by

“…Even the 1986 reform, which closed loopholes and lowered rates, didn’t do much to increase growth. Even after the reform was passed, people were paying the same amount in taxes, so they faced the same basic incentives.

If you closed loopholes and raised rates, as we’d have to do this time around, then you would make the incentives worse. Raising top tax rates may not be as cataclysmic for the economy as some have argued, but this is still one of the most growth-killing ways to raise revenue.

In other words, if we’re going to simultaneously address our two most pressing needs — raising revenue and boosting growth — we’re going to have to break free from the 1986 paradigm.

That means asking the basic question: What is the single biggest problem with the tax code? It’s not the complexity, bad as that is. The biggest problem is that it rewards consumption and punishes savings and investment.

You can’t fundamentally address that problem within the 1986 paradigm. You can address it only through a consumption tax. This idea is off the table right now, but reality will inevitably drive us toward it. We have to have a consumption tax if we want to both grow the economy and reduce debt.

But isn’t a consumption tax regressive since poor people spend a bigger share of their incomes than rich people? The late David F. Bradford of Princeton University effectively solved that problem with his so-called X Tax, which has recently been championed by Alan D. Viard of the American Enterprise Institute and others. Under the X Tax, you wouldn’t pay the consumption tax at the cash register. Businesses would be taxed on their cash flow, taking an immediate deduction for investments rather than depreciating them over time. Households would pay tax at progressive rates on their wages but would not pay tax on income from savings.

The X Tax effectively taxes the money you spend right now and rewards savings and investment. The government could raise a chunk of revenue this way and significantly boost growth with little or no change in how tax burdens are distributed between rich and poor. Most economists vastly prefer consumption taxes to income taxes.

The other complaint is that a consumption tax is politically impossible to get passed. There are, indeed, political difficulties. But there would be huge political difficulties if we try to do another 1986-style act next year. Every special interest will fight every loophole closing. And after all that, the country would get very little benefit in return. The political barriers to an X Tax are no greater, and we would actually address our problems…”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/opinion/Brooks-lets-talk-about-x.html

 

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Porter, Eduardo, “Broader Tax For Fighting Inequality,” New York Times, 11/28/12

November 28, 2012 by

“…Progressive taxes make it hard to raise money because they distort people’s behavior. They encourage taxpayers to reduce their tax liability rather than to increase their pretax income. High corporate taxes encourage companies to avoid them. High taxes on capital income also encourage avoidance and capital flight. High income tax rates on top earners can discourage work and investment, too. So trying to raise a lot of money with our progressive tax code would probably not achieve the goal and could damage economic growth.

Big-government social democracies, by contrast, rely on flatter taxes to finance their public spending, like gas taxes and value-added taxes on consumption. The Nordic countries, for instance, have very low tax rates on capital income relative to income from work. And they have relatively high taxes on consumption. In Denmark, consumption tax revenue amounts to about 11 percent of the nation’s economy. In the United States, sales taxes and excise taxes on cigarettes and other items amount to roughly 4 percent.

Liberal Democrats have long opposed them because they fall much more heavily on the poor, who spend a larger share of their incomes than the rich. But these taxes have one big positive feature: they are difficult to avoid and produce fewer disincentives to work or invest. That means they can be used to raise much more revenue.

Public finances are under strain today on both sides of the Atlantic, as governments struggle to cope with our long global recession and the aging of the baby boom generation. In Southern Europe, the pressure to pare back universal welfare systems is intense. In the United States, political leaders on both sides of the partisan divide have realized that even our relatively meager package of social goods cannot be sustained with our slim tax take.

But the United States has one option that most of Europe’s flailing economies do not. Its tax revenue is so low, comparatively, that it has more space to raise it. A more efficient, flatter tax schedule would allow us to do so without hindering economic activity.

Bruce Bartlett, a tax expert who served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, told me last week that he thought federal tax revenue could increase to 22 percent of the nation’s economic output, well above its historical average of 18.5 percent, without causing economic harm. If President Obama tries to go down this road, however, he may have to build a flatter tax code.

“We should reform the tax system, no question,” William Gale, a tax policy expert at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, wrote in an e-mail. “We are going to need to move beyond the current set of tax instruments to raise the needed revenues — a VAT and or a carbon tax seem like the obvious ways to go.” And Mr. Bartlett, who writes a column for The New York Times’s Economix blog, also pointed out: “We can’t get all the revenue we need from the rich. Eventually, everyone will have to pay more.” “

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/business/combatting-inequality-may-require-broader-tax.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

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