By Robert Borosage
The Obama administration released a “framework” for corporate tax reform on Wednesday, proposing to lower corporate tax rates, and pay for that by closing various corporate tax loopholes.
The “framework” isn’t really a corporate tax reform proposal. It is a message document, framed in a bitterly partisan election year when no reforms are about to take place. So what is the message?
The president wants to show that he’s sensitive to business complaints about a tax code with the highest nominal corporate tax rates in the industrial world, outraged at the loopholes and scams built into the code, committed to providing incentives for business to create jobs here at home, and stout in opposing more corporate tax cuts unlike his Republican opponents.