WASHINGTON: The businesses and associations that make up the RATE (Reforming America’s Taxes Equitably) Coalition have written to President-elect Donald Trump urging him to focus on cutting the US corporate tax rate in 2017.
In its letter, the RATE Coalition, made up of 34 American companies and associations, which account for nearly one-third of all US private sector employees, noted that they “know full well the damage that the punitive [35 percent US corporate tax] rate is doing.”
“Although headlines abound with news reports about US companies that don’t pay their fair share,” it added, “our member companies, in fact, pay an average tax rate of 32.5 percent. And we think that’s not only unfair, but also counter-productive.”
It said the US tax code is “chock full of loopholes and special preferences,” but the RATE Coalition suggested that “closely examining those loopholes and special preferences with an eye toward closing them if necessary, along with cutting the rate, can help to create a better, fairer, more pro-growth tax code.”
It pointed out that the President-elect has “an historic opportunity to enact real tax reform and thereby jump-start the economy.” Urging him to follow through with his campaign proposal to cut the corporate tax rate down to 15 percent, it wrote that such a “simple plan of reform will grow the economy, keep American jobs in America, and also keep American companies headquartered here.”
“A fairer, pro-growth tax code could also give corporations who have moved overseas an incentive to move back to the United States and start investing again in the American workforce,” the letter concluded.
