TinyURL.Com/MaasKey/EET
EET = Economic Extraction Tax, i.e.
Extraction-from-our-Economy Tax, i.e. impose a tax on any
money that companies extract from our domestic (USA*)
economy, i.e. take a bite out of the money that leaves our
economy.
(* Note: This same plan would be useful in other countries that are
losing money due to outsourcing or tax evasion or imbalance of trade.)
The proposal is to keep track of all income to a business,
then deduct from that income any money that is spent for
wages and salaries of legal employees within the USA*, and
also any money that goes to other domestic companies that
are likewise keeping track of their income and where each part
of it goes and thus complying with EET. Any income not
deducted for one of those two types of legitimate domestic business
expenses is taxed per the same IRS tax schedule as if the entire company
were a married couple with no children or other exemptions, except
that whereas married couples are taxed on their entire income,
companies would be taxed on just the remaining money after paying
domestic expenses. (But individual or married couple owning/running a
small business, can deduct business expenses, so in fact corporation and
private business would be taxed exactly the same if EET implemented, if IRS
rule is clarified to say that only domestic business expenses can be
deducted.)
All other ordinary business taxes, such as value-added tax,
are eliminated, replaced by this one Economic Extraction Tax.
Examples of types of money-outflow that would be taxed up-front
per this EET:
- Purchases of goods/equipment/supplies/fuel/services from anyone outside the USA*,
such as imports from China, customer support in India, petroleum from the
Middle East, etc.
- Purchases from companies that are in arrears on their taxes or
otherwise not complying with the EET
- Any "under the table" expenses such as hiring illegal aliens
or money that just "disappears" with no accounting for it.
- Net profit, whether kept as "cash on hand" or distributed
to investors/shareholders.
Clarification: Profit that is re-invested would be tax-deferred until
such time as the investment is sold or otherwise reaps income. So a company
can grow rapidly without having any tax burden, providing that all their
investment expenditures stay within the USA*.
Ideally EET would use the enhanced IRS tax schedule, with new high-end tax brackets
per Jan Schakowsky's proposal, but with higher tax rates on these tax
brackets up to 80% for taxable income over $1billion, as described
in Tax80.
Most ordinary productive companies, either manufacturers or distributers,
have narrow profit margins, so taxing only the money that isn't paid for
domestic expenses would result in very little tax liability, except for
companies which sell mostly imported goods, which would consequently have
an incentive to sell fewer imported goods and more goods produced in the USA*.
(New idea late 2012: If a company exports as much as it imports, the two
cancel, and there's no tax burden. Only if a company imports a lot more than
it exports, i.e. has an "imbalance of trade", with net money flowing out
of the domestic economy, then there'd be a tax burden. Importers and exporters
would be encouraged to merge into single companies that have net balance of
trade, thus no need for the government to worry itself about balancing
imports and exports, let private enterprise figure out for themselves how
best to merge into balanced-trade companies.)
The only companies that have huge profit margins are investment banks, which
make their money not by productive activity but by gambling on markets, often
using money that doesn't belong to them, and then
getting lucky, or by using "shady" techniques such as price manipulation
coupled with margin calls and short squeezes to extract money from normal
investors. The investment banks
contribute almost no actual value to our society, and
taxing them excessively would be appropriate, both to "punish" them for
a lifestyle of mostly gambling, and to give them incentive to split
into smaller companies, to get each piece into a smaller "tax bracket".
As a result of such breakup of giant banks, we'd reduce the problem of
"too big to fail"
which allowed them to coerce our government into bailing them out
after the 2008 financial crash
(and now "too big to jail", by which the criminals at Goldman Sachs and
Bank of America etc. never get charged with any crime).