Paul Krugman has an editorial today in the NYT about Ireland's economic problems. Apparently a 12.5% business tax is nice for the short term, not so good for the long term.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Business tax in Ireland?...Something about this conversation sounded familiar. Didn't I hear this being discussed on Meet the Press during the campaign? Oh yes I did!
Paul Krugman has an editorial today in the NYT about Ireland's economic problems. Apparently a 12.5% business tax is nice for the short term, not so good for the long term.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Business tax in Ireland?...Something about this conversation sounded familiar. Didn't I hear this being discussed on Meet the Press during the campaign? Oh yes I did!
None other than our leading economic guru John McCain (sorry Paul) was extolling the virtues of the 11% (actually 12.5%) Irish business tax.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
And just one other thing is businesses now are paying 35 percent taxes. Now, immediately, somebody's going to say, "Well, they don't pay that 35 percent." Ask Fred Smith, the CEO of FedEx; ask Meg Whitman, the CEO of eBay; ask John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco; they'll tell you that they pay 35 percent, OK? But they'll also tell you that one of the reasons why they're attracted to going overseas, to Ireland, it's 11 percent tax there. So why not go to Ireland where you can get qualified workers and, and you can save money and create jobs and, and invest? So this business about fat cat bailout and corporate, all that kind of stuff, we need to reduce the business tax in America and we need to keep, and we need to keep capital gains taxes low. That's 100 million Americans who have something to do with capital gains taxes.
I'm sure Senator McCain was up all night, crunching numbers on his abacus to verify the claims of his CEO associates.....On second thought, he should have used a calculator:
http://files.shareholder.com/...
EBAY INC. REPORTS THIRD QUARTER 2008 RESULTS
Taxes — The GAAP effective tax rate for the quarter was 13%, compared to (4%) for the third quarter of 2007 and 19% for the second quarter of 2008. The non-GAAP effective tax rate for the quarter was 17% compared to 10% for the third quarter of 2007 and 22% for the second quarter of 2008. The decrease in the sequential non-GAAP effective tax rate is due to changes in the estimated geographic mix of the company’s taxable income for the year.
If only John McCain had been a better communicator instead of a raw financial genius, his point would not be so lost on the low info liberal voter. What the Senator from Arizona wants is for all Americans to stop wasting their time earning a paycheck with the onerous 30% payroll tax. Instead, we should all be investing in equity and collecting dividend checks with a 15% tax.
Simply following John McCain's advice would cut the effective tax rate of every American in half! Think of how many jobs that would create! Unemployment would be at zero! Imagine getting a call from Bill Gates:
Mr. Gates: I, uhhh...our entire office is empty and I found your resume on Monster.com....Are you still looking for a job in Software Development?
You: ...And expose myself to a socio-communist payroll tax? Psshaw!
Remember, a society is measured by the way it treats the wealthy. If we want to have fantastic economic conditions like the roaring twenties, we must keep top marginal tax rates low:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/...