My wife and I were discussing the tax scam on our way back from the daily walk of the dogs when we started asking what would real tax reform that would helped American WORKERS look like. And we came up with a crazy notion — don’t look at corporate tax rates, look at corporate deductions. And we came up with this:
What if the corporate tax deduction for wages was scaled to incomes. And let’s say a progressive Congress decided to creates disincentives for companies for paying excessive or sub-standard wages. You could also, then, respond to US versus non-US wages. It might look like this:
Companies can deduct:
- 80% of wages and benefits for employees paid less than $15 per hour;
- 110% of wages and benefits for employees paid more than $15 per hour with total wages of less than $125,000/year;
- 100% of wages and benefits for employees paid more than $15 per hour with total wages of less than $175,000/year;
- 90% of wages and benefits for employees paid more than $15 per hour with total wages of less than $300,000/year;
- 75% of wages and benefits for employees paid more than $15 per hour with total wages of over $300,000/year
You could also either create incentives (by increasing the deduction percentage for US wages) or by disincentives (by reducing deductions for non-US wages) for US versus non-US employment.
Just a thought off the top of the head but really, why not?