“Policymakers have an opportunity this year to enact critically important tax reforms that would better prevent multinational corporations from shifting their profits offshore to avoid paying taxes and would raise substantial revenue,” writes Samantha Jacoby at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
This is a result of misguided policies at the federal level. The issuer of a sovereign fiat currency never needs its own currency back to enable spending. Taxes serve several worthwhile functions, but "revenue" at the federal level is a misnomer and is responsible for many failures of our federal government to mitigate the suffering of the poor and raise the middle-class to its former iconic position in the world.
A simple zero tax rate on business would eliminate the "job creator" argument and allow for much higher taxation at the shareholder level where real income disparity exists. Also, recognizing that there is no "infinity+1" in math that better enables a currency-creating sovereign government to spend on the public purpose via higher taxation is a must for all critical thinkers who influence policy at the federal level. There is no case to be made for raising the cost of doing business for no purpose based on the reality of our monetary system.
The best way to deal with the wealthy shareholders is to make them irrelevant to the good of society. That will assure that they pay more than they do now when they can point to the "job creator" label whenever their incomes are threatened by the government. Our nation, specifically Congress, can "afford" anything that can be resourced in the private sector and purchased with the dollars it can create on demand.
We don't need their money, and that means we can extract whatever portion of it we deem best for society. Monetary sovereignty is largely misunderstood by most Americans and even many economists, but it is the key difference between enabling an economy that works for the greater good of the people and an oligarchy that extracts their labor and resources for the good of the few.
