Tax Foundation Podcasts on Business Taxes
Download or listen to individual podcasts by clicking on the links below for the MP3 files, or subscribe through ITunes so you never miss a podcast.
March 21, 2011
Manager of Communications Richard Morrison talks with Tax Foundation President Scott A. Hodge about his latest study, Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact No. 261, “Countdown to #1: 2011 Marks 20th Year That U.S. Corporate Tax Rate Is Higher than OECD Average.” The U.S. corporate tax rate will soon become the highest in the industrialized world. As other nations enact reforms and rate cuts, the U.S. corporate rate will continue to stand out as a hindrance to economic growth and competitiveness unless lawmakers move to lower the tax burden for businesses.
Manager of Media Relations Richard Morrison interviews economist and American Enterprise Institute Resident Scholar Aparna Mathur on corporate taxes and her new study (with co-author Kevin Hassett), “Report Card of Effective Corporate Tax Rates: United States Gets an F.”
July 28, 2010
Nevada policymakers are considering a number of tax reform proposals. These could include changes to business taxes as well as sales taxes. The Nevada Policy Research Institute recently released a report suggesting comprehensive fiscal reforms to improve the state’s economy. Geoffrey Lawrence, a fiscal policy analyst for the Institute and author of the report, “One Sound State, Once Again,” discusses the Institute’s recommendations in this week’s podcast.
July 14, 2010
There has been much discussion among policymakers and the media about the possibility of a value added tax, or VAT, in the United States — either to help reduce the growing federal budget deficit or to offset other tax cuts. This week’s podcast guest is Randall Holcombe, Ph.D., who has authored “The Value Added Tax: Too Costly for the United States,” for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Holcombe discusses the VAT’s negative impact on long-term growth rates, along with four major costs associated with the VAT: the excess burden, or deadweight loss, of the tax, as well as compliance, administrative and political costs.
Holcombe is the DeVoe Moore Professor of Economics at Florida State University and Senior Fellow at the James Madison Institute, a Tallahassee-based think tank that specializes in issues facing state governments. He served on Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors from 2000 to 2006 and was president of the Public Choice Society from 2006 to 2008. He is interviewed by Tax Foundation Staff Economist Kail Padgitt, Ph.D.
May 26, 2010
U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has introduced the Economic Freedom Act of 2010, which would reduce the federal corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 12.5 percent, cut payroll taxes in half, eliminate the capital gains and estate taxes and provide immediate business expensing. Interviewing Congressman Jordan is Rob Shrum, the Tax Foundation’s Manager of Development and State Affairs.
Jordan admits it’s an ambitious package that has little chance of enactment, but says it can help set the tone for an important larger debate. “Frankly we know that our bill is not going to pass with this Congress,” he says. “We think it helps set the context and the framework for this fall’s election, this fall’s debate as we move closer to the November election. Are we going to continue down the big government, big taxation, big regulation road or are we going to look at what we know will actually foster job creation, what we know will actually promote economic activity – reducing the taxes on small business owners and on families?”
May 19, 2010
The United States House of Representatives’ Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law recently held a hearing titled, “State Taxation: The Role of Congress in Developing Apportionment Standards.” In this week’s podcast, Arushi Sharma, a clerk with the Tax Foundation’s Center for Legal Reform, interviews Professor John A. Swain of the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, who testified at the hearing on the historical aspects of the apportionment of business income among states and the importance of uniformity in setting apportionment standards. Swain discusses how more states have moved away from a three-factor apportionment formula (property, payroll and sales) to a single-factor sales apportionment formula.
May 5, 2010
The Missouri General Assembly is considering a resolution that would allow Missourians to vote on a constitutional amendment to eliminate the state’s individual income tax (which has a top rate of 6% on income over $9,000) and corporate income tax (6.25%) and replace the revenue with a broad-based sales tax on all consumer goods and services. The state’s current general sales tax rate is 4.225%, and the new rate would be 5.11%. Missouri’s current sales tax base includes about 30 percent of all consumer goods and services, according to Dr. Joseph Haslag, Executive Vice President of the Show-Me Institute and the Kenneth Lay Chair in economics at the University of Missouri-Columbia, who discusses the proposal on this week’s podcast.
April 8, 2009
Just recently, the Democratic controlled House approved its version of the budget, 233 voting yes and 196 voting no. The Democratic controlled Senate approved its version, 55 voting yes and 43 voting no. Republicans in the minority have also come out with alternative versions of the budget. In this edition of the Tax Policy Podcast, Tax Foundation Manager of Media Relations Matt Moon talks with Congressman Tom Price (R-GA 6th District), chairman of the Republican Study Committee. Price discusses why the RSC decided to come up with an alternative budget, and explains the differences between the two parties’ budgets when it comes to overall spending, deficit spending, tax provisions, Social Security and Medicare. Price also discusses some budget reform proposals, including a proposal to creating “Family Budget Protection Accounts.”
March 25, 2009
From the March 17, 2009 edition of the Wall Street Journal:
If the government suddenly said you would incur more onerous and expensive tax regulations and reporting requirements if you moved your business to a low-tax state such as Texas or Florida from a high-tax state such as New York or California, you would be justifiably outraged. Now substitute Switzerland and Bermuda for Texas and Florida, and France and Germany for New York and California, and you’ll understand a new form of ‘tax protectionism’ that is infecting Washington.
That was written by Dr. Richard Rahn, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, in an op-ed entitled “In Defense of Tax Havens.” In this edition of the Tax Policy Podcast, Manager of Media Relations Matt Moon talks with Rahn about various proposals in Congress that would increase taxes, penalties and regulations on investment in low-tax jurisdictions rather than high-tax jurisdictions, as well as the importance of tax competition and financial privacy.
March 11, 2009
Outside of the short term policies that have been presented, from the stimulus to the budget, the Obama Administration has indicated that it plans to include fundamental tax reform as part of its long term agenda.
In this edition of the Tax Policy Podcast, Matt Moon moderates a discussion between Tax Foundation Vice President for Economic Policy Robert Carroll and Concord Coalition Chief Economist Diane Lim Rogers. Together, with Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and John E. “Buck” Chapoton of the Concord Coalition, Carroll and Rogers wrote a paper entitled “Moving Forward with Bipartisan Tax Policy” which can be found here as Tax Foundation Working Paper No. 5.
In the podcast, Carroll and Rogers discuss principles they agreed on (simplicity, transparency, promoting savings, rethinking tax expenditures, and an environmentally motivated tax policy) as well as principles where they had divergent viewpoints (the appropriate size and role of government along with the appropriate level of progressivity in the tax code.)
March 4, 2009
On the heels of President Barack Obama’s recent release of his fiscal year 2010 budget, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI 1st District), ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, is pushing for major reform in the areas of tax, monetary and entitlement policy, criticizing the new administration’s budget as having the practical effect of taxing “work, savings, investment, capital and risk-taking far more than we are today” and “hurting our chances of coming out this recession robustly.”
In a discussion with Tax Foundation Manager of Media Relations Matt Moon in this week’s edition of the Tax Policy Podcast, Ryan proposes a two-tiered individual income tax system with the top marginal tax rate cut to 25% and the lower bracket cut to 10% for the first $100,000 for couples, as well as a cut in the corporate tax rate to 25%.
January 28, 2009
With a new Congress and a new administration focused on a short term stimulus proposal to get America out of the current economic downturn, others are focused on long term plans involving taxes to spur investment, create jobs and increase our standard of living. In this edition of the Tax Policy Podcast, Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge discusses corporate tax reform proposals and global tax competition with Alex Brill, research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and economic policy adviser at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC.
- Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute on Corporate Taxes and Global Tax Competition
October 29, 2008
We continue our discussion on corporate taxes with Chris Edwards, Director of Tax Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Chris has written a new book with Cato Senior Fellow Daniel Mitchell called Global Tax Revolution: The Rise of Tax Competition and the Battle to Defend It. While the country is going through tough economic times, Chris argues that the United States must embrace competition and overhaul the federal tax code, including reforming business taxes. In this edition of the Tax Foundation’s Tax Policy Podcast, Chris reflects much of the message of our CompeteUSA campaign and discusses tax reforms that have been enacted in several nations, emphasizing that international tax competition is an often forgotten, yet exciting aspects of globalization.
March 31, 2008
Jim Tisch, President and CEO of Loews Corporation, and Ed McClellan, Tax Counsel at PricewaterhouseCoopers, talk to Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge about the problem of the Untied States’ high corporate capital gains rate. They explain the difference between the individual capital gains rate and the corporate capital gains rate, the problem of “locked-in” assets and their detrimental impact on business decisions and job creation, the Untied States’ decreasing global competitiveness in the face of European nations that are cutting or eliminating the corporate capital gains tax, and the proposal to cut the 35 percent rate to 15 percent. (18 minutes, 2 seconds.)
January 17, 2008
Dr. William Gentry joins Tax Foundation Vice President for Economic Policy Robert Carroll to discuss who bears the burden of the corporate income tax. Dr. Gentry is an economics professor at Williams College in Massachusetts and recently wrote a paper for the Treasury Department titled A Review of the Evidence on the Incidence of the Corporate Income Tax. Dr. Gentry discusses the growing academic evidence that suggests the burden of business taxes is increasingly falling on labor and impacting workers directly. (14 minutes, 26 seconds)
December 12, 2007
Peter Merrill, head of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ National Economic Consulting group, discusses his study that shows the United States has the OECD’s second-highest corporate tax rate but realizes the fourth-lowest revenue from the tax. He offers his thoughts on the causes of and solutions to this problem, and ways for the U.S. to become more competitive and efficient.
October 2, 2007
Alex Brill of the American Enterprise Institute discusses his new study on business tax rates across the world and shares his observations, findings and suggestions for the future. He points out that the U.S. rate is well above that of competing nations and that the U.S. should lower its rate dramatically to improve international competitiveness.
February 27, 2007
Mark Weinberger, Americas Vice Chairman for Tax Services at Ernst & Young and former Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy at the U.S. Treasury, explains the importance of bipartisanship and cooperation between the President and Congress, the difficulties of achieving tax simplification in the face of so many attempts to implement social policy through the tax code, the possibility of reform or repeal of the alternative minimum tax, Social Security reform, and the effect of our high business tax rate on corporate inversion. (15 minutes, 39 seconds)
December 5, 2006
Mihir Desai, Associate Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School and Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, discusses various aspects of business taxation, including the effects of taxation on business decisions, the damage caused by the tax treatment of corporate capital gains, territoriality, the advantages of reconciling book and tax accounting, and the complacency surrounding the United States’ high corporate tax rate. (15 minutes, 17 seconds)
November 7, 2006
Douglas Shackelford, Meade H. Willis Distinguished Professor of Taxation and Director of the University of North Carolina Tax Center, and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, discusses the effect of cuts in capital gains and dividend taxes on the stock market; double taxation; the conformity of book and tax accounting; and the viability of the corporate income tax in an economy increasingly comprised of intangible goods. (18 minutes, 2 seconds)
October 17, 2006
Kevin Hassett, Resident Scholar and Director of Economic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, discusses the effectiveness of federal budget rules, the worldwide impact of the corporate income tax on wages, and the relationship between budget deficits and recent tax policy (11 minutes, 10 seconds).
October 10, 2006
The United States is increasingly linked to the world economy through trade and investment. But does the current tax system help or hinder this process of integration into the world economy? Robert Carroll, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis at the U.S. Treasury, discusses principles of fundamental tax reform, the costs of federal tax compliance, and the impact of the current tax code on U.S. international competitiveness (12 minutes, 20 seconds).
July 18, 2006
R. Glenn Hubbard, dean of the Columbia Business School and former Chairman of the President’s U.S. Council of Economic Advisers discusses options for reforming the U.S. corporate tax system (9 minutes, 28 seconds).
July 25, 2006
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, discusses trends in rising federal spending, dynamic scoring of federal tax policies, and options for international business tax reform (12 minutes, 26 seconds).
August 1, 2006
Bill Archer, senior policy analyst at PricewaterhouseCoopers and former Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, discusses the U.S. corporate tax burden, territorial vs. worldwide tax systems, and the effect of the corporate income tax on outsourcing and global investment flows (11 minutes, 4 seconds).
August 15, 2006
Economist Martin A. Sullivan, contributing editor at Tax Analysts, discusses corporate tax competition around the world, ways to improve the U.S. corporate income tax, and the economic case against using state and local tax incentives to attract companies (12 minutes, 30 seconds).
September 12, 2006
Stephen Moore, editorial board member of the Wall Street Journal, discusses the politics of fundamental tax reform, the impact of corporate income taxes on workers’ wages, and options for reforming the alternative minimum tax (9 minutes, 57 seconds).