So Much Winning You'll Be Tired of Winning: Walmart Announces Bonuses, Hikes to Starting Wage Due to Tax Reform

That's a big one. But there's been more big announcements like that.

A major re-insurer, Assurant, had in 2017 announced plans to relocate to Bermuda. Market Watch, which I think is a CBS vertical, mocked Paul Ryan's claim that reducing the corporate tax rate would keep it in America.

One of the big flaws in the U.S. corporate income tax is that it encourages companies to shift revenue, profit, operations, investment and employment to other countries. The Republicans say a big benefit of their tax reform plan is that it would stop companies from doing that.

But the Republicans are wrong. Their plan would do a bit — but not enough — to discourage American companies from continuing to use tax gimmicks to avoid U.S. taxes by pretending that they earn their profits in other countries. And it wouldn’t do much to discourage companies from shifting their investment, employment and operations out of the United States, or giving up their U.S. residence through a corporate ownership inversion.

In fact, the Republican plan could make it easier.

Everyone on both sides of the aisle agrees that the U.S. corporate tax system needs to be reformed, because the current worldwide system encourages a lot of economically wasteful tax avoidance. We need a fair tax system that will raise significant revenue without harming American businesses or the U.S. economy. It’s not an easy task.

But while the Republican plan unveiled Thursday would lower the corporate rate to 20% from 35% and establish a territorial tax system, it wouldn’t do much to stop the tax-avoidance gimmicks. Why? Because there would still be an incentive to shift profits to countries that have a tax rate that’s even lower.

A few weeks ago, House Speaker Paul Ryan argued that the 20% rate would have prevented an American company, Assurant, from moving its legal headquarters to Bermuda, which doesn’t impose any corporate income tax at all.

But the last I checked, 20% is higher than 0%. The Trump-Ryan-Brady plan wouldn’t eliminate the incentive for U.S. companies to shift their operations or to shift their profits using creative transfer pricing techniques.

Nearly every tax expert who’s studied this issue agrees that the problem identified by Ryan would remain even after his bill is approved.

Well check this, stupid motherfucker: Assurant just announced it would in fact now remain in the US, despite liberal media "experts" claiming otherwise.

Oh, you didn't see any media retractions or confessions about that error? Well, see, "Experts" don't confess error. That's what makes them Experts, you know.

And here's another company handing out bonuses like they were free passes to go upstairs with a NeverTrumper's wife:

Not to mention the big Magillah: As promised, companies will begin repatriating hundreds of billions of dollars which had been parked outside of America, permanently, due to favorable treatment of that money so long as it remained outside the US.

Now that the repatriation rate is 15%, just one sector -- tech, led by Apple -- alone will repatriate $400 billion-with-a-b back into America.

Technology companies will thrive from the hundreds of billions in cash parked outside the U.S. coming into the country this year, according to one Wall Street firm.

"With the Trump administration and Beltway imposing a 15.5% tax on [repatriated] cash earnings vs. the previous 35% tax rate we expect a surge of overseas cash to come back into the US with large cap tech being the clear beneficiary for 2018 and beyond," Daniel Ives, head of technology research at GBH Insights, wrote in a note to clients Thursday.

Ives estimates large U.S. technology companies have $550 billion to $600 billion parked overseas. He predicts they will repatriate $300 billion to $400 billion in 2018, with Apple representing $200 billion of that amount.

All this may be contributing to the New Era of High Spirits:

Bit of a danger sign there, though: With the economy doing so well, and economic sentiment flying high, Trump should be doing better, poll-wise.

But perhaps the country is so hyperpartisan that the old rule, that a strong economy redounds to the benefit of the party in power, no longer holds.

Personally, I suspect the RUSSIANS are rigging the US economy to appear better than it is to benefit their AGENT Trump.

posted by Ace at 03:00 PM

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