It’s Tuesday.
For Tuesday September 14th, 2021, President has received his daily brief (it’s still not listed on his schedule, but we are going to assume he is until we know he isn’t). He’s a traveling man again going from California to Colorado. In Colorado he will visit the National Energy Laboratory where he will offer remarks on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal and his Build Back Better agenda. He will depart Colorado and head back to D.C., this evening Colorado time.
President Biden has tweeted 3 times so far for Tuesday; I’m sharing them all down thread.
When Biden Bits was published on Monday President Biden had tweeted 1 time. He added 4 tweets giving him a Monday Tweeting Total of 5 tweets and 0 retweets.
Three of his four tweets focused on rich people paying “their fair share.”
TUESDAYS TWEET:
As you are all aware, this tax plan is part of his Build Back Better Agenda.
The Build Back Better Agenda has three pillars:
The American Rescue Plan that was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden on March 11th, 2021.
The American Jobs Plan aka the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal.
The American Families Plan which I believe equals the $3.5 trillion in spending plan that passed the Senate via budget resolution. The spending is over 10-years.
There is also the Made in America Tax plan that’s posted at the bottom on the American Jobs Plan. But, I think at this point, that plan has been absorbed into the other plans and agendas. Another but, since it’s the only place I can actually find some of the tax plan wants and not just the tax cuts proposed I’m gonna use it now.
- Set the Corporate Tax Rate at 28 percent. The President’s tax plan will ensure that corporations pay their fair share of taxes by increasing the corporate tax rate to 28 percent. His plan will return corporate tax revenue as a share of the economy to around its 21st century average from before the 2017 tax law and well below where it stood before the 1980s. This will help fund critical investments in infrastructure, clean energy, R&D, and more to maintain the competitiveness of the United States and grow the economy.
- Discourage Offshoring by Strengthening the Global Minimum Tax for U.S. Multinational Corporations. Right now, the tax code rewards U.S. multinational corporations that shift profits and jobs overseas with a tax exemption for the first ten percent return on foreign assets, and the rest is taxed at half the domestic tax rate. Moreover, the 2017 tax law allows companies to use the taxes they pay in high-tax countries to shield profits in tax havens, encouraging offshoring of jobs. The President’s tax reform proposal will increase the minimum tax on U.S. corporations to 21 percent and calculate it on a country-by-country basis so it hits profits in tax havens. It will also eliminate the rule that allows U.S. companies to pay zero taxes on the first 10 percent of return when they locate investments in foreign countries. By creating incentives for investment here in the United States, we can reward companies that help to grow the U.S. economy and create a more level playing field between domestic companies and multinationals.
- End the Race to the Bottom Around the World. The United States can lead the world to end the race to the bottom on corporate tax rates. A minimum tax on U.S. corporations alone is insufficient. That can still allow foreign corporations to strip profits out of the United States, and U.S. corporations can potentially escape U.S. tax by inverting and switching their headquarters to foreign countries. This practice must end. President Biden is also proposing to encourage other countries to adopt strong minimum taxes on corporations, just like the United States, so that foreign corporations aren’t advantaged and foreign countries can’t try to get a competitive edge by serving as tax havens. This plan also denies deductions to foreign corporations on payments that could allow them to strip profits out of the United States if they are based in a country that does not adopt a strong minimum tax. It further replaces an ineffective provision in the 2017 tax law that tried to stop foreign corporations from stripping profits out of the United States. The United States is now seeking a global agreement on a strong minimum tax through multilateral negotiations. This provision makes our commitment to a global minimum tax clear. The time has come to level the playing field and no longer allow countries to gain a competitive edge by slashing corporate tax rates.
- Prevent U.S. Corporations from inverting or claiming tax havens as their residence. Under current law, U.S. corporations can acquire or merge with a foreign company to avoid U.S. taxes by claiming to be a foreign company, even though their place of management and operations are in the United States. President Biden is proposing to make it harder for U.S. corporations to invert. This will backstop the other reforms which should address the incentive to do so in the first place.
- Deny Companies Expense Deductions for Offshoring Jobs and Credit Expenses for Onshoring. President Biden’s reform proposal will also make sure that companies can no longer write off expenses that come from offshoring jobs. This is a matter of fairness. U.S. taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize companies shipping jobs abroad. Instead, President Biden is also proposing to provide a tax credit to support onshoring jobs.
- Eliminate a Loophole for Intellectual Property that Encourages Offshoring Jobs and Invest in Effective R&D Incentives. The President’s ambitious reform of the tax code also includes reforming the way it promotes research and development. This starts with a complete elimination of the tax incentives in the Trump tax law for “Foreign Derived Intangible Income” (FDII), which gave corporations a tax break for shifting assets abroad and is ineffective at encouraging corporations to invest in R&D. All of the revenue from repealing the FDII deduction will be used to expand more effective R&D investment incentives.
- Enact A Minimum Tax on Large Corporations’ Book Income. The President’s tax reform will also ensure that large, profitable corporations cannot exploit loopholes in the tax code to get by without paying U.S. corporate taxes. A 15 percent minimum tax on the income corporations use to report their profits to investors—known as “book income”—will backstop the tax plan’s other ambitious reforms and apply only to the very largest corporations.
- Eliminate Tax Preferences for Fossil Fuels and Make Sure Polluting Industries Pay for Environmental Clean Up. The current tax code includes billions of dollars in subsidies, loopholes, and special foreign tax credits for the fossil fuel industry. As part of the President’s commitment to put the country on a path to net-zero emissions by 2050, his tax reform proposal will eliminate all these special preferences. The President is also proposing to restore payments from polluters into the Superfund Trust Fund so that polluting industries help fairly cover the cost of cleanups.
- Ramping Up Enforcement Against Corporations. All of these measures will make it much harder for the largest corporations to avoid or evade taxes by eliminating parts of the tax code that are too easily abused. This will be paired with an investment in enforcement to make sure corporations pay their fair share. Typical workers’ wages are reported to the IRS and their employer withholds, so they pay all the taxes they owe. By contrast, large corporations have at their disposal loopholes they exploit to avoid or evade tax liabilities, and an army of high-paid tax advisors and accountants who help them get away with this. At the same time, an under-funded IRS lacks the capacity to scrutinize these suspect tax maneuvers: A decade ago, essentially all large corporations were audited annually by the IRS; today, audit rates are less than 50 percent. This plan will reverse these trends, and make sure that the Internal Revenue Service has the resources it needs to effectively enforce the tax laws against corporations. This will be paired with a broader enforcement initiative to be announced in the coming weeks that will address tax evasion among corporations and high-income Americans.
CNBC News reported on Monday that “House Democrats” outlined a “bevy of tax hikes.”
They explain; The plan calls for top corporate and individual tax rates of 26.5% and 39.6%, respectively, according to a summary released by the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. The proposal includes a 3% surcharge on individual income above $5 million and a capital gains tax of 25%.
The linked above PDF is 18 pages long. As CNBC News notes, this PDF is subject to change plus “It’s unclear how much the tax increases would raise and if the new revenue would offset the full investment in social programs. Democrats could ultimately cut the legislation’s price tag as centrists balk at a $3.5 trillion total.”
The YouTube video is 14 minutes and 6 seconds long. His full remarks can be found here.
President Biden (11:20): Extreme weather cost America, last year, $99 billion. Let me say it again: Extreme weather in the United States cost the United States of America a total of $99 billion. And this year, unfortunately, we’re going to break that record. It’s a devastating loss to our economy and for so many communities. When we — when we fail to curb pollution from smokestacks and tailpipes and continue to use fossil fuels as we do, we increase risk that firefighters face. But each dollar we invest in resilience saves up to six dollars down the road when the next fire doesn’t spread as wisely [sic] — as widely, and those investments also save lives. When I think about climate change, I think about not the cost; I think about good-paying jobs it’ll create. But I also think the jobs we’re losing due to impacts on the supply chains and industries because we haven’t acted boldly enough. We have to build back — and you’ve heard me say it a hundred times — not just build back, but build back better, as one nation. We’ve got to do it together. We’ll get through this together. We just have to keep the faith.
The above video tweet was sent after this one:
In Idaho he visited the National Interagency Fire Center.
The YouTube video is 26 minutes and 46 seconds long. Their remarks can be found here.
Okay, so, while I was slowly, so slowly today guys, I’m sorry, putting together this thread, I saw some tweets from Daniel Dale
Now, as I was knee deep in trying to find “tax” things, I didn’t really give the tweets much thought. That is until I saw this…
He really asks the Secretary of State; Somebody in the White House has the authority to press the button and stop the President–cut off the President’s speaking ability and sound. Who is that?
Rightly, Blinken’s first response is to laugh.
I hate people.
The daily press briefing is once again in the form of an Air Force One Press Gaggle. That means audio only and as always sometimes the feed just magically goes away only to pop back later.
Because time zones are real, I believe President Biden’s remarks are starting around 5:30 D.C., time that would be 3:30 Colorado time and 2:30 California time.
This is an Open Thread.
