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Morton Mintz's Debate Questions: Tax Policy
On October 1, 2004, Bill Moyers talks with Morton Mintz, veteran WASHINGTON POST reporter and former chair of the Fund for Investigative Journalism, about the presidential debates. Mintz has reported on every televised debate since they started in 1960. For several cycles he has drawn up his own list of questions that should be, but often aren't, asked in the debates. In anticipation of the 2004 debate cycle Mintz reviewed matters of concern from national fiscal policy to America's role in the world and came up with an extensive list of questions he'd like to see the two candidates asked. His full list of questions is printed below.
National Policy — National Security/Foreign Policy —
Fundamental Fairness — Tax Policy— Religion in American Life —
Questions for President Bush — Questions for Senator Kerry
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Mintz on Tax Policy
The government has known for years that U.S.-based multinational corporations dodge taxes in ever larger amounts by stashing the profits of foreign subsidiaries in offshore havens. In 1999, a study of Commerce Department data shows, these untaxed or mostly untaxed profits totaled $88 billion; in 2002, $149 billion--up 68 percent in just four years. The estimated annual loss of tax revenues runs as high as $70 billion. Rank-and-file Americans whose taxes are withheld at the source are forced to make up the loss. Many have seen their jobs moved to the tax havens.
What would you do to end the offshore tax-dodging and thereby collect tens of billions of dollars in revenues for the U.S. Treasury?
U.S.-based companies that pay corporate income taxes often find themselves bidding for federal contracts against competitors planted by U.S. corporations in foreign tax havens so that they pay little or nothing to the U.S. Treasury. Thus is the playing field tilted toward former U.S. companies that flip their ownership structure to relocate in offshore tax havens.
Would you try to level this playing field?
We continue to give substantial tax advantages to multinational corporations over domestic companies.
Why?
The Internal Revenue Service has been auditing more people earning less than $25,000--such auditing is quick and easy--than it has people earning more than $100,000 (auditing of the wealthy is time-consuming and complex).
Will you ask Congress give the IRS the funds it need to focus its auditing of taxpayer returns on those where the evasions can be big-time?
Some Americans earning $30,000 pay a larger proportion of their income in federal, state and local income taxes, and Social Security than do some people earning $30 million.
Is this fair?
If the unmarried parents of two children each earns, say, $18,000, each partner can claim an earned-income-tax-credit of about $2,000; if they become man and wife, they would give up their their eligibility for the credit and lose $4,000 every year thereafter.
What would you do about this marriage penalty?
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