Tax day is truly the lone bipartisan day of the year. We all hate it equally. It's a day that liberals can agree with Ronald Reagan, who said, "High taxes and excess spending growth created our present economic mess. More of the same will not cure the hardship, anxiety and discouragement it has imposed on the American people."
It is also a day when conservatives can agree with John F. Kennedy, who said, "I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies...."
So, in the spirit of bipartisanship, let me attempt one simple tax policy argument. Lower the corporate income tax.
It's something -- and probably the only thing -- that former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-New York, actually agree on. But what makes it so important is the rest of the world agrees on it, too. In a global economy, companies can locate themselves wherever they want. They will set up shop wherever it's easiest to do business. That's also where they will pay most of their taxes and hire thousands of workers.
If you have to make the decision on where to do business, would you choose the country that, according to the Tax Foundation, features the highest corporate state and federal tax in the developed world? I doubt it.
The World Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers just finished their report studying the burden that businesses face by various tax systems. In what it calls the "ease" of paying taxes, we ranked 76th out of 178 countries overall. That's not good.
Unless, of course, you happen to think "good" is being significantly behind the Sudan and Rwanda. We're also three slots behind Palau, which is apparently a country. Who knew? In fact, we're close to 40 slots behind the two countries we're in the middle of trying to free: Iraq and Afghanistan.
Our total tax rate, which includes all taxes paid by a company -- federal, state, property taxes, etc. -- is a literally insane 46.2 percent, ranking us behind 101 countries overall. How do we possibly expect to compete on the global scale when Borat's home country is 44 slots ahead of us?
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