Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jagfan who wrote (225819)	2/6/2002 5:26:54 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

LOL: 'the United States taxes corporations more heavily than any other country?' >>> That's idiotic. It's so far from the truth, it's not even funny. Does your quoted columnist even know what the corporate tax rate is in Sweden, for just one example? Or in France? Apparently not! US effective corporate tax rates are well below the EU average, and that's quite a few countries. (In fact we are considered a 'low tax' nation by that arbiter of all that is high tax, the O.E.C.D.) And by the way: corporate dividend payout rates for the S&P 500 are at historic lows (perhaps as a result of the double taxation of dividends) so they don't contribute much to the US corporate tax burden. (And yes, I DO BELIEVE that profits that are paid out in dividends should not be taxed at the corporate level... since taxes will be paid by the recipient anyway). But why should interest payments be dedutible as your article proposes? Why should we favor only one form of corporate financing (thus favoring the industry - banking - that supplies it) while not favoring any of the other methods of corporate financing like, for example, equity issuance, or retained earnings? We encourage debt instead of profits by this misguided policy. There's a word for it, and it's a bad word: "industrial policy" - where the government picks the industries they want to win, shafts all the others, and attempts to run the economy in a demand structure instead of leaving it up to the Free Markets. Japan famously tried it, it failed (no government can out-think a free market consistently), and look what state they are in now! It's time we as a nation had a real debate about abandoning authoritarian attempts to 'manage' the economy... and the best place to start is with the real facts, not fantasies like those from your post.