Roy Cordato has recommended an end to North Carolina’s “hidden, dishonest, deceptive” corporate income tax. Meanwhile, Jim McTague notes in the latest Barron’s that even the Democratic Party’s platform writers have noted the problems associated with the current federal corporate income tax.
McTague contrasts Democrats’ treatment of the corporate income tax with their unclear treatment of “middle class” taxes.
THANKFULLY, THE PLATFORM’S DISCUSSION of corporate taxes is clearer — so clear, in fact, that conservative economists at a luncheon I attended last week were happily buzzing about its endorsement of an across-the-board lower corporate tax rate, achieved in part by closing “unnecessary loopholes.” To the economists, this plank suggested that if President Obama were to be re-elected, he’d have common ground on which to reach a corporate tax-reform agreement with Republicans. The thinking among the economists is that the president, if re-elected, will no longer have to fear his base and no longer will engage in the destructive back-and-forth game with the GOP of “my way or the highway.”
The platform’s plank on corporate-tax reduction was unexpected. Democrats gleefully have been bashing the GOP’s Mitt Romney for describing corporations as “people.” Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was cheered by an arena full of convention delegates when she said mockingly last Wednesday: “No, Gov. Romney, corporations are not people. People have hearts.”
The platform writers did not fret about the inconsistency between the party’s rhetoric and the platform plank. But they certainly seem to appreciate it. Thus, if you are looking for the plank, you will find it buried on page 40.