Archive for April, 2016

Is Bi-partisan Tax Reform Possible?

Wednesday, April 27th, 2016

Tis the season of talk about tax reform. Every presidential election cycle, the candidates all propose some kind of tax reform. However, once the new president is elected, Congress does not do anything because tax reform becomes the “third rail” to special interests who lobby for or against reforms that would affect them. The last comprehensive tax reform that Congress passed was the Tax Reform Act of 1986, more than a generation ago. Thus, we must pose the question: Is it possible for Congress to pass bi-partisan tax reform.

First, let’s separate fact from the rhetoric:

Rhetoric: Corporations play games to keep from paying their fair share of taxes.

Fact: Out of the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group that includes most advanced, industrialized nations, America ranks first with a 39.1 percent corporate tax rate, compared to an OECD average of 24.1 percent. However, the effective rate for 2014 was 27.9 percent, which was second highest behind New Zealand among OECD countries and 15th-highest among the 189 countries measured. Effective tax rate takes into consideration the tax deductions allowed corporations to reduce the pool of taxable profits.

Some corporations aren’t paying their fair share of taxes because multinational corporations that have subsidiaries or divisions in other countries use legal accounting strategies to transfer profits to lower corporate tax rate countries or set up shell corporations in tax haven countries. This means that American corporations whose only facility is in the U. S. bear the brunt of our high taxes, making it more difficult for them to compete in the global marketplace.

One of the strategies used is what is called “Corporate inversion” by Investopedia, which refers to re-incorporating a company overseas in order to reduce the tax burden on income earned abroad. Corporate inversion as a strategy is used by companies that receive a significant portion of their income from foreign sources, since that income is taxed both abroad and in the country of incorporation. Companies undertaking this strategy are likely to select a country that has lower tax rates and less stringent corporate governance requirements.
How can we get these multinational corporations to pay their fair share of taxes in the United States?

Well, we can follow the example of states that have passed bi-partisan tax reform to address the problem of getting corporations to pay a fair share of taxes in their state. The solution was “apportionment” of corporate income taxes that is a share of taxes to be paid by a corporation to a state based on a particular formula. According to a Policy Brief by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, all but the five states that don’t have a corporate income tax (Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming) have adopted some type of formula for state apportionment of corporate taxes.

  • “First, if a corporation does not conduct at least a minimal amount of business in a particular state, that state is not allowed to tax the corporation at all. Corporations that have sufficient contact in a state to be taxable are said to have “nexus” with that state.
  • Second, each state where a corporation has nexus must devise rules for dividing the corporation’s profits into an in-state portion and an out-of-state portion — a process known as “apportionment.” The state can then only tax the in-state portion.”

About half the states with a corporate income tax adopted the model legislation worked out in the 1950s, called the Uniform Division of Income for Tax Purposes Act (UDITPA). UDITPA recommends the following three factors to determine the share of a corporation’s profits that can be taxed by a state:

  • “The percentage of a corporation’s nationwide property that is located in a state.
  • The percentage of a corporation’s nationwide sales made to residents of a state.
  • The percentage of a corporation’s nationwide payroll paid to residents of a state.”

Only two states use the percentage of property tax since local government jurisdictions already impose a property tax, and state governments don’t want to encourage corporations to relocate to other states by doubling up on property tax. Only eight states still use the unmodified formula, and many have moved to just sales. Most of the rest of the states have increased the weight on sales, and 18 states “double weight” the sales tax percentage.

One of our members of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, Bill Parks, is a passionate advocate of corporate tax reform at the federal level based on the Sales Factor Apportionment Framework. Mr. Parks is a retired finance professor and founder of NRS Inc., an Idaho-based paddle sports accessory maker. He asserts that “Tax reform proposals won’t fix our broken corporate system… [because] they fail to fix the unfairness of domestic companies paying more tax than multinational enterprises in identical circumstances.”

He explains that multinational enterprises (MNEs) can use cost accounting practices to transfer costs and profits within the company to achieve different goals. “Currently MNEs manipulate loopholes in our tax system to avoid paying U. S. taxes… MNEs can legitimately choose a cost that reduces or increases the profits of its subsidiaries in different countries. Because the United States is a relatively high-tax country, MNEs will choose the costs that minimize profits in the United States and maximize them in what are usually lower-tax countries.”

The way his plan would work is that the amount of corporate taxes that a multinational company would pay “would be determined solely on the percent of that company’s world-wide sales made to U. S. customers. Foreign MNEs would also be taxed the same way on their U. S. income leveling the playing field between domestic firms and foreign and domestic MNEs.”

For example, if a MNE’s share of worldwide sales in the United States is 40%, then the company would pay taxes on 40% of its sales. Mr. Parks states that the advantages of his plan are:

  • “Inversions [and transfer pricing] for tax purposes become pointless because the company would pay the same tax no matter what its base.
  • It would encourage exports because all exports are fully excluded from corporate income tax.
  • It simplifies the calculation for federal, state, and local taxes because the profit to be taxed by the U. S. is determined by a simple formula.
  • Reduces or eliminates the tax incentives to locate jobs, factories, and corporate headquarters offshore, boosting employment and U. S. tax revenue.
  • Ends the disguised income taxes which are actually royalty payments.
  • Allow Congress to raise revenue without raising rates because it stops U. S. and foreign multinationals from being able to place their profits offshore to avoid U. S. taxes.”

A couple of additional benefits listed at www.salesfactor.org are:

  • “Removing the incentives for multinational corporations to leave their profits in off-shore tax havens.
  • Maintaining Congress’ ability to lower rates and/or increase revenue.”

Bill concludes that “Sales Factor Apportionment is simpler and more effective than our current system which attempts ? and often fails ? to tax the worldwide business activities or U. S. corporations. Because it is based on sales, not payroll or assets, it is a difficult system to game. Companies can easily move certain business operations and assets out of the U. S., but few, if any, would be willing to give up sales to the world’s largest market.”

Mr. Parks was part of my team visiting the offices of Congressional Representatives in Washington, D. C. the week of April 11th, and several Representatives appeared quite interested in the Sales Factor Apportionment tax proposal he described. Mr. Parks is the author of a much more in-depth article in the April 4, 2016 issue of Tax Notes (available only by subscription), and I am happy that he gave me permission to write about this topic for my audience. For further information, you may email him at Bill@nrs.com. You can also read the results of several studies on SFA at www.salesfactor.org.

CPA’s Balanced Trade Message has Impact on Congress

Wednesday, April 27th, 2016

I just returned last Friday night from the Coalition for a Prosperous America‘s 9th annual Fly-In to Washington, D. C. It was my 4th time to participate with CPA members from across the country to meet with Congressional Representatives and/or their staff. I noticed a big difference in the reception we got during our visits compared to my first trip. The Coalition for a Prosperous America is a nonprofit organization representing the interests of 2.7 million households through our agricultural, manufacturing and labor members, and I’ve been a member since 2011.

In his report, CEO Michael Stumo wrote, “It was an amazing experience to finally have the wind at our backs instead of facing headwinds…CPA is taken very seriously by congressional offices. They trust what we say. One-fourth of our meetings included the congressman/woman themselves, which is significant and a new high for us. Senior staffers attended our meetings rather than junior staffers as was the case only a few years ago.”

However, we have not just been doing an annual visit to D. C. once a year since 2008. Teams of CPA members led by Michael Stumo have made visits to D. C. once or twice a month since January 2015. Here in California, teams of members led by me have visited the offices of 37 of the 53 Representatives from one to six times since 2013. In addition, CPA has co-hosted four manufacturing summits in California starting in 2013 ? two in San Diego, one in Orange County, and our recent one in Sacramento in February. The same kinds of activities have taken place in other states where CPA has a state chapter, such as Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania.

In all of our visits, either in district or in D. C., we have constantly focused part of our message on simply establishing why our huge trade deficit not only matters, but is core to our national economic malaise. As I have written in past articles, our annual trade deficit over the past 20 years has a relationship to our national debt and is a major cause of the loss of 5.8 million manufacturing jobs and the nearly 95 million people that are no longer part of the workforce.

For years, we have been emphasizing the following:

  1. Trade deficits matter, they kill jobs and growth: This may sound obvious to you and me, but many Representatives and their staffer did not believe trade deficits mattered in the past. They were unwilling to admit the serious consequences in having a huge deficit in goods. So, if trade deficits were not a problem, there was no need to pursue a solution. Michael Stumo wrote, “This past week showed we have largely won that argument. We can only grow jobs and our economy if we focus upon a national strategy to balance trade by identifying the biggest trade cheating problems and aggressively fixing them.”

Our teams distributed a flyer titled, “Balanced Trade: Fighting the New Mercantilism” recommending that Congress establish a national goal to balance trade over a reasonable period of time by means of:

  • Direct trade negotiators to pursue trade deficit reduction as a primary negotiating objective.
  • Review past agreements for compliance with this objective. Renegotiate those that fail the test.
  • Utilize tax, fiscal and monetary policies to achieve the goal.
  • Aggressively and systematically attack and neutralize foreign mercantilism.
  1. Past trade agreements have not improved our trade performance: For years, we have heard this line from the establishment and Congressional Representatives: “Trade agreements establish American leadership, grow exports and create jobs.” The refrain was: “Trade is beneficial. We are increasing exports, and we have a surplus in services.” The only time I heard this refrain this year was by a legislative assistant in Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office.

We were able to trounce this argument this year by distributing a flyer that clearly showed the poor trade performance of our past agreements through visual aids CPA spent a lot of time developing (see below). We clearly showed that modern foreign mercantilism has moved beyond the tariff and non-tariff barrier provisions in trade deals. Indeed, those deals often made our trade problems worse. For example, our trade deficit with Korea has nearly doubled since it went into effect in 2012 (from $14.7 billion to $28.4 billion in 2015.)

The TPP will likely make America worse off: CPA read and digested the pro-TPP studies by Petri and Plummer, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Working Paper 16-2, Jan 2016 and the “Global Economic Prospects: Potential Macroeconomic Implications of the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” by the World Bank, Jan 2016. These reports tried to hide the problems and exaggerate gains. Our CPA teams distributed a flyer that “displayed the results through insightful infographics showing that any projected gains were embarrassingly meager and fundamentally implausible”[because] “The studies assume, without analysis, (a) no currency misalignment, (b) no foreign border taxes that replace tariffs, (c) no industrial subsidies and state-influenced enterprises, and (d) no mercantilism.” As Michael Stumo wrote, “These assumptions are untrue. Therefore, we cannot achieve the meager growth projected. We showed how those studies were built upon a series of demonstrably false assumptions to produce those meager gains. Then we showed why losses to American workers, industry and the economy were nearly certain when you eliminated the false assumptions.”


This year we also proposed tax reform that can fix some major foreign trade cheating on a large scale. As Michael Stumo, wrote, “Tax reform is a challenge because K Street lobbyists rig the game for special interests and no connection is made with our success in producing here and winning the international trade competition. However, we made significant gains in showing how we can fight foreign consumption taxes that act as tariffs by smartly adding a US consumption tax and funding the reduction of other regressive taxes and costs to fix the problem. We also showed how we can fix the corporate income tax system with sales factor apportionment to halt tax haven abuse by transnationals, incentivize US domestic production, and make foreign companies pay their fair share of income tax when selling into the lucrative American market.”

The good news is that everyone we saw seemed to agree that the TPP does not have the votes to pass before the election. The danger will be in the “Lame Duck” session. We seem to be in a far better position to prevent future passage than we were last year at this time with regard to passage of the “Fast Track” Trade Promotion Authority. Michael Stumo, wrote, “We almost beat Fast Track last June. Indeed we won the first votes in regulation time but lost in overtime when the Empire Struck Back. Now, it seems that the anti-Fast Track block is holding strong and quite a lot of pro-Fast Track congressional members have either declared opposition to TPP or are leaning against it.”

Michael added, “GOP House leadership pushed Fast Track through last year but they seem to view TPP as toxic now. The GOP rank and file are letting House leadership know they do not want to vote on TPP at any time in the foreseeable future. The Senate side is less solid and has always posed the bigger challenge. Senate majority leadership wants changes to TPP but still wants get to ‘yes.’ However, the changes being demanded are difficult (but perhaps not impossible) to deliver.”

We are being helped by the stand against trade agreements by two of the major presidential candidates, Trump and Sanders, who bring up our broken trade policy in almost every speech. “Trade has become one of the few, rare ‘voting issues’… an issue that actually moves voters to support or oppose a candidate.”

While this has been a several year battle, we haven’t won yet and still have a lot to do. The establishment will continue say that the voters simply don’t understand the “greater good.” Pundits will continue to write many “reasoned” articles about why the voters should support trade agreements such as the TPP. But the success of Trump and Sanders shows that the establishment has not only lost its clout, it is actively disbelieved by many now.

Help us to grow this movement and increase our effectiveness. Encourage your friends and colleagues to participate. Let’s keep up the good fight!

How Could the Trans Pacific Partnership Affect you or your Business

Tuesday, April 19th, 2016

On February 4, 2016, President Obama signed the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement on behalf of the United States. The TPP agreement has been in negotiation behind closed doors since 2010 between the United States and 11 other countries around the Pacific Rim: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. The TPP is a “docking agreement” so other countries could be added without the approval of Congress. India, China, and Korea have expressed interest in joining the TPP.

Our elected representatives in Congress had no involvement in writing the TPP – it was written by the staff of the U. S. Trade Representative office, with over 600 corporate advisors (think corporate lawyers) helping them write it. It contains more than 5,500 pages, and no member of Congress could view it as it was being negotiated until late 2014. Even then, they could not take any staff with them and were not allowed to take pen, pencil, paper, or a camera when they went to view it at the U. S. T. R.’s office.

The full text of the TPP was finally released to the public to review in November 2015, and it now awaits Congressional approval. According to the rules established by the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) that passed Congress narrowly in June 2015, Congress will only be allowed 45 days for committee analysis after the bill is introduced, only 15 days after that is completed to bring it up for a floor vote, and only 20 hours of debate in the House and Senate. The TPA does not allow any amendments, filibuster, or cloture. Notice that the TPP is called an “Agreement,” as was NAFTA, CAFTA, KORUS, and every other trade deal in the past 22 years. The purpose for this is to get around the requirement of the two-thirds vote of the Senate to approve a Treaty that is required under Article 1, Section 8 of the Treaty clause in the U. S. Constitution. The TPP requires only a simple majority vote (50% + one.)

Supporters of the TPP say that it represents 40% of the world’s economic activity (GDP), but they fail to mention that the U. S. and its current trading partners represent 80% of that 40%. The other five countries represent the other 20%, with Japan alone being 17.7% of that total.

The current goal of trade agreements as given by Congress to the U.S.T.R is to “remove trade barriers,” such as tariffs, quotas, etc. and increase U. S. exports. The U. S. cut tariffs and opened our markets by means of these trade agreements. However, our trading partners didn’t really open their markets to us. They played another game ? mercantilism, featuring rampant global currency devaluation, consumption taxes called Value Added Taxes (VATs) that are tariffs by another name, massive subsidies to their industries, and industrial policies that favor their domestic supply chains.

In brief, the effect to the United States of this unbalanced trade has been:

  • Loss of >600,000 mfg. jobs from NAFTA
  • Loss of 3.2 million mfg. jobs between 2000 – 2010 from China’s entry into WTO
  • Loss of >60,000 mfg. jobs since Korea-US Agreement went into effect in 2012
  • Loss of an estimated 3.4 million U. S. service & call center jobs since 2000
  • Loss of an estimated 700,000 public sector jobs (2008-2013)
  • Racked up cumulative trade deficit of $12 trillion in goods (average $500 billion each year) since 1994

As a result, we now have the worst trade deficit in U. S. history, and we are off to even a higher deficit this year based on the trade figures released for January ($45.9 billion) and February ($47.1 billion). As a recent example of the effect of trade agreements on our total trade deficit, our trade deficit with Korea has nearly doubled in less than four years, increasing from $14.7 billion in 2012 to $28.4 billion in 2015. Proponents of KORUS promised that it would create 70,000 jobs and $10 billion in exports.

As mentioned in a previous article, proponents of the TPP aren’t even giving such rosy predictions. The Peterson Institute’s analysis of the TPP states: “…GDP is projected to fall slightly (-0.54 percent), employment to decline by 448,000 jobs…”

What are some of the ways the TPP could affect you or your business?

Buy American Act would essentially be made Null and Void: The worst effect would be to those businesses who sell to the government, whether it be local, state, or federal because under the TPP procurement chapter, the U.S. would have to agree to waive Buy America procurement policies for all companies operating in TPP countries. This means that all companies operating in any country signing the agreement would be provided access equal to domestic firms to bid on government procurement contracts at the local, state, and federal level. There are many companies that survived the recession and continue in business today because of the Buy American provisions for government procurement, especially defense and military. The TPP could be a deathblow for companies that rely on defense and military contracts. However, it would also affect procurement for infrastructure projects, such as bridges and freeways, as well as construction of local, state, or federal facilities.

Of course, this means that U. S. companies could bid on government procurement projects in TPP countries, but the trading benefit is miniscule. The U. S. government procurement market is 7X the size of current TPP partner countries (+550 billion vs. $55 -70 billion.) It is also highly unlikely that U. S. companies would be the low bidder against domestic companies in these TPP countries because of the vast difference in wages in countries such as Vietnam, where the average wage is 55 cents/hour. Past trade agreements has resulted in an average annual wage loss of 5.5% for full-time workers without college degrees, and U. S. wages have been stagnant for decades, growing by only about 2% per year since 2008. The result has been increased wage inequality from low to high wage earners.

Product Labeling could be Made Illegal: If you like to know if your food is safe, then you won’t like the fact thatCountry of Origin,” “Non-GMO,” or “Organic” labeling could be viewed as a “barrier to trade” and thus be deemed illegal. According to Food & Water Watch, around 90% of the shrimp and catfish that Americans eat are imported. They warn, “The TPP will increase imports of potentially unsafe and minimally inspected fish and seafood products, exposing consumers to more and more dangerous seafood.” Many TPP countries are farm-raising seafood in polluted water using chemicals and antibiotics prohibited in the U. S. Farmed seafood from Malaysia, Vietnam, and China is being raised in water quality equivalent to U. S. sewers. Today, the FDA only inspects 2% of seafood, fruits and vegetables, and the USDA only inspects 4-5% of meat & poultry. Increased imports of food from TPP trading partners could swamp FDA and USDA inspections, so that even less is inspected.

TPP would Increase Immigration: If you are concerned about jobs for yourself or family members, then you won’t like the fact that the TPP increases “the number of L1 visas and the number of tourist visas, which can be used for business purposes.” Any service provider (phone service, security, engineers, lawyers, architects or any company providing a service) can enter into a TPP partner country and provide that service. Companies don’t have to hire Americans or pay American wages – they can bring in own workers and pay less than the American minimum wage.

TPP would Increase Job Losses in Key Industries: If you work in the automotive or textile industries, you may lose your job. The Center for Automotive Research projects a loss of 91,500 U. S. auto jobs to Japan with the reduction of 225,000 automobiles produced in the U. S. Also, the National Council of Textile Industries projects a loss of 522,000 jobs in the U. S. textile and related sectors to Vietnam.

TPP would Reduce Reshoring: Because TPP will reduce tariffs in trading partner countries, such as Vietnam, it will make the Total Cost of Ownership analysis to return manufacturing to America more difficult to justify. The high U. S. dollar has already diminished reshoring in the past year, so Harry Moser, Founder and President of the Reshoring Initiative, recently told me that “The combination of the high USD and TPP will reduce the rate of reshoring by an estimated 20 – 50%.”

Remember that the TPP is missing any provisions to address the mercantilist policies practiced by our trading partners: currency manipulation, Value Added Taxes that are both a hidden tariff and a hidden export subsidy, government subsidies/state owned enterprises, and “product dumping.”

 America is at a crossroads. We can either continue down the path of increasing trade deficits and increasing national debt by allowing anything mined, manufactured, grown, or serviced to be outsourced to countries with predatory trade policies. Or, we can forge a new path by developing and implementing a national strategy to win the international competition for good jobs, sustained economic growth and strong domestic supply chains. If you support the latter path, then add your voice to mine and millions of others in urging Congress not to approve the TPP in either the regular session before the Presidential election or the “lame duck” session after the election.