I don't want to outlaw layoffs. If a company is having trouble they should be able to do whatever they need to in order to remain in business. What I'm saying is a company doesn't get a tax break just for the asking. What do "we the people" get in return for that break? It's especially disconcerting when companies expect a tax break while telling the individual they have to pay more to make up the slack.
trying to use the tax code to control behavior will backfire. With the attitude you have the olny rational thing to do is to fire all the workers and close up shop , what a numb nuts emotional tax plan there loser.
No hire, no tax break. Simple as that. They don't get something just for the asking. They have to earn it! How's about this. Since it's been deemed corporations are people, then people should have all the benefits of a corporation. Where's my corpoarte tax break? Where's my corporate welfare? Where's my corporate make work program? Where's my bailout? Where's my money that YOU owe me just for being in business?
If all you are asking for is a tax incentive for those companies that hire. I don't see anything wrong with that. The problem is if you punish those that don't. As long as it's left as an incentive, I don't think that distorts supply and demand. However, here is where the problem will lie. Obviously you are going to put conditions on new hires right? So the government might demand these are high paying jobs right? Otherwise what is to stop a company from cutting their wages in half and collecting a tax break on top of that. That leads us down the slippery slope of companies over hiring to capture a tax break then getting saddled with a bloated payroll when the economy turns south. Would we then be exaggerating the economic cycles and creating even more volatility. At the end of the day, we create a somewhat artificial marketplace which defeats the purpose of having a free market. I would support something like this only for one year and let it expire. Just to kick start things. I would not want this as a permanent solution.
For sure it's more complicated than what I threw out, but we need to have the discussion. I can tell you the working class just isn't going to roll over for Romney and hope things work out. What are we going to get for this corporate tax break? Romney needs to spell that out. I'm not asking that with an adversarial tone, but it's needs to be answered.
Connecting tax breaks to business expansion does make some sense - but it's not just hiring employees, it should also cover buying new equipment (someone else hires) or any form of strengthening the business that makes it worth for the owner to take additional risk. The caveat here should be that we want smaller government, not larger. Give this to Obama and he'll first hire 50,000 IRS agents to supervise and micromanage the new thing... a la "did you hire enough dumb blondes or are you still over-represented in the smart brunettes category which is not a protected group?" and "are your napkins from a union (democratic) shop or did you get them from the devil?" etc etc... Btw, convicted felons are now a protected group in Washington DC and who knows where else: http://washingtonexaminer.com/eeocs-protection-of-felons-could-hurt-minority-hiring/article/687071
Not a bad idea, not bad at all. I can also appreciate Mav's point that we don't want to create something artificial or that can be gamed too easily. Romney and Ryan are both smart guys who should be able to come up with a plan which provides these incentives for corporations and gives some kind of guarantee to the working class that they're not being suckered. They need to get on it right quick.
Now that tax break we have received. I won't say who approved it as that will just start another fight, but you make a good point.
I know what you're thinking, but, not wanting to start another fight, I will not say how I know. HOWEVER, you're dead wrong, no question about it!
Cut Big Business's Corporate Welfare by Tad DeHaven With the federal government closing in on its fourth consecutive budget deficit in excess of $1 trillion, the national debt is hurtling toward dangerous levels. If the nation is to avert a debt crisis, federal policymakers need to aggressively balance revenues. Business subsidies, or "corporate welfare," are a good place to start. A new study from the Cato Institute estimates that the federal government will spend almost $100 billion on corporate welfare this year. That includes direct and indirect subsidies to small businesses, large corporations and industry organizations. These subsidies are handed out from programs in many departments, including the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development. Americans are sick and tired of crony capitalism, which should make business subsidies ripe for cutting. Indeed, the federal government's bailout of the financial industry has galvanized the public's perception that business interests enjoy disproportionate political favor. A 2010 Pew Research Center/National Journal poll found that only 13 percent would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supported federal loans to banks, while 46 percent said they would be less likely. While subsidies for "clean energy" enjoy more public support than those for banks, their outcomes are damning. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been lost year after year on businesses that were simply not financially viable â the solar power firm Solyndra being the most famous example. Politicians often justify business subsidies by claiming that they are needed to fix supposed imperfections in the marketplace. But as the ongoing debacle with clean energy subsidies shows, policymakers do not possess special knowledge that enables them to allocate capital more efficiently than markets. When the government starts choosing industries and technologies to subsidize, it often makes bad decisions at taxpayer expense. The hit to taxpayers is problem enough â the damage done to the broader economy is arguably worse. Policymakers, for example, have long argued that the government should subsidize housing to make the "American dream" available to more people. But that dream has turned into a nightmare in the aftermath of the housing meltdown and financial crisis, which was precipitated, in part, by government efforts to foster homeownership. However, instead of learning their lesson, policymakers have continued to intervene and subsidize. In recent years, they have been using the Federal Housing Administration to try to help prop up the housing market and the agency's lending portfolio has soared to more than $1 trillion. That might be all right for the banking industry since the FHA insures lenders for 100 percent of the principal and interest on mortgages it backs, but it could spell trouble for taxpayers and the economy down the road. The problems with such subsidies are therefore evident even when one assumes that policymakers are motivated by the noblest of intentions. The reality is that lawmakers often have base parochial interests in mind when they support subsidy programs. During a Senate committee hearing on the Department of Energy in February, Sen. Al Franken, Minnesota Democrat, spent his allotted time badgering Secretary Steven Chu about a federal loan his department conditionally approved for a company in his state in 2010 but had yet to be finalized. On the other side of the aisle, dozens of congressional Republicans â many critical of the administration's energy subsidy policies â were found to have quietly sent letters to Mr. Chu requesting handouts to businesses in their backyards. An even better example is farm subsidies, which redistribute wealth from taxpayers to a small group of relatively well-off farm businesses and landowners. In 2010, the average income of farm households was $84,400 â or 25 percent higher than the $67,530 average of all U.S. households. Numerous large corporations, and even some wealthy celebrities, receive farm subsidies because they are the owners of farmland. Yet policymakers make grandiose claims that the handouts are necessary to "preserve the nation's food supply," even though their chief motivation is to curry favor with their farming constituents. Therein lies the biggest obstacle to cutting these subsidies: special interests. Whereas the cost of each particular subsidy represents just a tiny portion of the average household's total tax bill, the businesses that receive subsidies have a strong incentive to spend time and money cajoling policymakers into protecting their benefits. Lawmakers are surrounded by political operatives and persistent lobbyists representing countless special interests. The result is an endless stream of input encouraging them to spend more money. The recent failure of congressional Republicans to rein in corporate welfare â despite campaign promises to seek substantive budget cuts â demonstrates the power that the special interests wield in Washington. Freshmen Republicans from the "Tea Party class" were instrumental in passing a bloated farm bill out of the House Agriculture Committee. In June, only 33 percent of GOP freshmen voted to eliminate the Community Development Block Grant program, which subsidizes businesses. In May, most freshmen voted to spare the Economic Development Administration. Republicans also recently teamed up with Democrats to save a program that subsidizes airlines. And 127 Republicans joined most Democrats in voting to defeat an amendment that would have shut off the Department of Energy loan program that gave birth to Solyndra. Ultimately, the voting public will have to hold members responsible for continuing to lavish subsidies on commercial interests. Policymakers need to be forced to explain why they chose to support corporate welfare at a time when the government's red ink is mounting and the average worker continues to face economic uncertainty. Otherwise, the business-as-usual attitude in Washington that so many policymakers claim to be against will continue to lead the country toward fiscal Armageddon.