Five Biggest Problems: Corporate Taxes

Part of a series on the Five Biggest Problems Facing America:

Introduction

5. Unnecessary wars

4. Inequalities in public education

3. Corporate tax loopholes (Tuesday)

2. Medicare (Wednesday)

1. Money in politics (Thursday)

Conclusion (Friday)

In each of these posts, I am basically trying to claim that we’ve lost commonsense on some of the biggest issues facing the country.  This is one.

I understand the Supreme Court’s decision that a corporation is a citizen, and is afforded the same rights that a private citizen has. That is ridiculous, and I’ll tackle it on Thursday.

But for now, let’s talk about our problem with not enough revenue in our government. While I agree that some entitlement programs need to be cut (see tomorrow), we also need more money in the coffers. That money can and should come from corporations, many of which have the ability to pay.

The problem, it seems, is that they also have the money to pay for lawyers and accountants to find ways for them to not pay taxes. Running a cost-benefit analysis, their money is currently better spent on the latter.

I doubt that a flat tax, or even a simplified graduated tax rate, will ever come to be for individuals. But — and I say this as a small business owner — it seems totally reasonable to flatten and simplify the tax rates for corporations. Because, if corporations are indeed citizens, then they have a keen interest in the recovery of the American economy, not just in their own bottom lines.