Although I have been off the Web, far more than on it, during this stage of my vacation in Costa Rica, I have been able to follow the controversy over the "HHMT" article, if that's the word for it, that the Romney campaign disseminated in support of their tax, economic, and budget policies. Krugman and DeLong have stated it strongly, albeit in my view appropriately so.
Readers of this blog are unlikely to be surprised by my conclusion that this was not a good piece of work - although you really don't need my opinion, when the author of almost every article they cited has stated publicly that their citations were out of context at best, and if not unrelated then directly contrary to the conclusions that HHMT claimed could be drawn.
I happen to be on friendly terms with 2 of the 4 authors of HHMT - a third one I have exchanged emails with once or twice, and the fourth I don't know personally at all. So there are some personal ties that I care about here. I also generally have high respect for their academic work.
What disappoints me is that they appear to have made the judgment that the reputational cost of signing this piece (which falls below the standards they honor in their academic work) was worth bearing. They are all grown-ups, and if all that was involved was the reputational hit versus the benefit they see to helping the Romney campaign and/or aiding the ultimate adoption of policies that they believe in and/or showing their loyalty, that is a call that (absent further effects) they are fully entitled to make.
But there is an externality problem here. Their issuing the piece moves towards changing the acceptable standard for academics working in a campaign, and in quite a bad way. It hurts academics' reputation over the long run, and it cheapens public discourse, by making it harder for people who are not in the know to figure out what the issues and accepted lines of plausible debate actually are.
In the 2008 presidential campaign, I criticized Doug Holtz-Eakin for occasionally making public statements, seemingly with his economist hat on, that he could not have believed were true, and that are better left to the hacks that every campaign inevitably employs. (Oddly, he also frequently made very frank public statements that I wouldn't have blamed him for clamming up about instead.) But he only crossed the line (as I see it) via statements to the press, often seemingly off the cuff, as distinct from via short papers with footnotes to the academic literature.
Here's hoping that HHMT conclude that it was a bridge too far this time, and that they should be more careful next time, both for personal reasons and principled ones. They should keep in mind that principle is about more than furthering the adoption of your principles.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Ryan and Medicare
It is certainly 100% fair to say that the Ryan plan would "end Medicare as we know it." A tightly capped voucher program simply isn't the same thing, even if you still call it "Medicare.". Likewise, though this admittedly is a much further stretch, repealing all healthcare for seniors but expanding midnight basketball programs "Medicare" wouldn't mean the program hadn't been repealed.
On the other hand- and there definitely is an "on the other hand" here - the slowed growth that the Ryan plan at least ostensibly makes explicit are baked into the math of inevitable retrenchment in the ate of healthcare expenditure growth compared to GDP. The Obama approach, while clearly within "Medicare as we know it," involve a similarly reduced growth rate by different means.
So it admittedly isn't fair to tag the Ryan plan with the fact that the rate of healthcare expenditure growth must slow.
By the way, each side rightly points out that the other can't really "show us the money" re. The actual credibility of its claim that the rate of healthcare expenditure growth will slow. For the Obama side, it goes to the success of the apparatus to slow growth, raising issues of both how it works in the field and of political resolve. For the Ryan plan, it's straight political resolve, as in: Why should we believe future Congresses will be willing to hold the line when Ryan himself won't do so in the short-term budget?
Medicaid is another matter. The Republicans appear quite willing to shred this program, although it may turn out to have widespread political support extending to their own voters.
On the other hand- and there definitely is an "on the other hand" here - the slowed growth that the Ryan plan at least ostensibly makes explicit are baked into the math of inevitable retrenchment in the ate of healthcare expenditure growth compared to GDP. The Obama approach, while clearly within "Medicare as we know it," involve a similarly reduced growth rate by different means.
So it admittedly isn't fair to tag the Ryan plan with the fact that the rate of healthcare expenditure growth must slow.
By the way, each side rightly points out that the other can't really "show us the money" re. The actual credibility of its claim that the rate of healthcare expenditure growth will slow. For the Obama side, it goes to the success of the apparatus to slow growth, raising issues of both how it works in the field and of political resolve. For the Ryan plan, it's straight political resolve, as in: Why should we believe future Congresses will be willing to hold the line when Ryan himself won't do so in the short-term budget?
Medicaid is another matter. The Republicans appear quite willing to shred this program, although it may turn out to have widespread political support extending to their own voters.
- I am giving a talk at the U of Illinois Law School next March, at an endowed lecture on retirement issues, where I will attempt to address the underlying philosophical differences in terms of political economy and inter- (as well as intra-) generational risk-sharing, with Paul Samuelson's famous model of Social Security playing a key role. I will be aiming for higher ground than current political spats. But clearly I will have to write it in lieu of whatever happens in this year's election.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Romney and Marriott
Much ongoing controversy over the last couple of days re. the fact that Romney headed Marriott's Audit Committee in 1994, when the company did a $70 million Son-of-BOSS tax shelter.
The essence of the deal was: I pretend to pay you $70 million, you pretend to pay me $70 million (most of it just being fake circular cash flows of supposedly borrowed funds on paper), I claim that as a technical matter I can deduct the $70 million I "paid" and ignore the $70 million I "received." And i reject or ignore the undeniable application of anti-tax shelter doctrines (from Supreme Court cases decided in 1935 and 1960) requiring economic substance and business purpose, I cross my fingers and hope that the IRS doesn't figure it all out. If they do, I presumably have a fake opinion I paid someone good money to write for me, permitting me to claim bogus good faith. (Although, in fairness, non-tax lawyers may have thought this actually worked if they didn't get actual tax advice to double-check the promoters' canned opinions.)
Given the $70 million deduction Marriott was claiming, this would have implied claimed tax savings of almost $25 million (at a 35% corporate rate). It is plausible to me that deciding to do this would have been by far the single biggest issue that Romney's audit committee would have faced.
I can't say that he did see and understand the issues this way, and make the call to go the sleazy route of hoping the IRS would miss the issue, but this is indeed what would have had to happen if the Marriott audit committee was doing its job in a properly functioning process.
The essence of the deal was: I pretend to pay you $70 million, you pretend to pay me $70 million (most of it just being fake circular cash flows of supposedly borrowed funds on paper), I claim that as a technical matter I can deduct the $70 million I "paid" and ignore the $70 million I "received." And i reject or ignore the undeniable application of anti-tax shelter doctrines (from Supreme Court cases decided in 1935 and 1960) requiring economic substance and business purpose, I cross my fingers and hope that the IRS doesn't figure it all out. If they do, I presumably have a fake opinion I paid someone good money to write for me, permitting me to claim bogus good faith. (Although, in fairness, non-tax lawyers may have thought this actually worked if they didn't get actual tax advice to double-check the promoters' canned opinions.)
Given the $70 million deduction Marriott was claiming, this would have implied claimed tax savings of almost $25 million (at a 35% corporate rate). It is plausible to me that deciding to do this would have been by far the single biggest issue that Romney's audit committee would have faced.
I can't say that he did see and understand the issues this way, and make the call to go the sleazy route of hoping the IRS would miss the issue, but this is indeed what would have had to happen if the Marriott audit committee was doing its job in a properly functioning process.
Thursday, August 09, 2012
Someone said something stupid on the internets (and unfortunately it was me)
I am currently on vacation in Costa Rica, with somewhat spotty Internet access but communicating by email with the States. Several reporters have contacted me, to discuss issues such as the Romney tax returns, and yesterday I was in contact with people representing Erin Burnett at CNN regarding a Huffington Post article by Ed Kleinbard and Peter Canellos a couple of days ago, concerning Mitt Romney's tax returns and attitude towards tax planning.
They criticized him with respect to Romney's role in 1994, on the Marriott board, concerning the company's decision to invest in a Son-of-BOSS tax shelter.
I've been in a sense uneasy about my Romney commentary over the months, despite 100% standing by it, for the following reason. I regard myself as a straight shooter, not a player in the game. I am opposed to Romney in the 2012 election (and I must say that I increasingly find myself, to my surprise, regarding him extremely negatively). But since this is in large part policy-based - although also reflecting what I see as his evasiveness and rank dishonesty - I feel as if it's all too convenient for me to find myself also criticizing his tax return behavior, as well as the secrecy that I consider a slap in the face to basic political principles of transparency and disclosure. But again, it's convenient to denounce all this stuff, given the political disagreement part, and I have always had an over-active conscience. (I can feel guilty when I am entirely innocent.)
I thus feel a need to dial it back occasionally, and to bend over backwards to be fair (e.g., with regard to the significance of his possibly having needed to file for an amnesty program in re. his Swiss bank account). I want not only others but myself to perceive me as being scrupulously fair.
Anyway, I was dismayed to have it brought to my attention that I have apparently been quoted at CNN as saying that, although Son-of-BOSS has become iconic as the most infamous abusive tax shelter in U.S. tax history, at the time (1994) perhaps its status was ambiguous.
The worst thing about this quote is that it's accurate and in context on CNN's part. But it's not factually correct about Son-of-BOSS even back then, and it's not what I actually believe. I was just bending over backwards to be fair and not too partisan, given that I don't know a lot of details about Romney's degree of involvement in and responsibility for what Marriott did in 1994. So I felt uneasy about blaming him too much or considering it too indicative of who he is (although it fits the narrative pretty darned well), without my first knowing more.
So I hereby retract what I was accurately quoted as saying. Even in 1994, no competent tax lawyer could in good faith have believed that Son-of-BOSS worked (although this may not have been obvious to anyone who was not a tax expert), and while I still don't know enough to fully judge his true role in all this, I would say that, if he was actively involved and competently advised, it would, in my view, have shown disgusting and immoral behavior on his part. (Plus there would be no reason to think that he has subsequently thought better of it.) But the predicates remain uncertain, at least to me.
Given what we still don't know, it's all the more important to see 10 previous years of tax returns. After all, 1997 through 2001 or so was the high water mark of people like him investing in abusive tax shelters that sent a lot of the promoters to jail. Did Romney, on his own tax return, invest in Son-of-BOSS and other abusive tax shelters, such as CDS (which is hinted at by his 2010 return), back in the day?
Lots of other experts keep on saying he was too smart to do this rotten stuff and thus must have paid some income tax each year. But, despite the uncertainty that he himself has created through his actions, I sure wouldn't bet the house on their being right.
They criticized him with respect to Romney's role in 1994, on the Marriott board, concerning the company's decision to invest in a Son-of-BOSS tax shelter.
I've been in a sense uneasy about my Romney commentary over the months, despite 100% standing by it, for the following reason. I regard myself as a straight shooter, not a player in the game. I am opposed to Romney in the 2012 election (and I must say that I increasingly find myself, to my surprise, regarding him extremely negatively). But since this is in large part policy-based - although also reflecting what I see as his evasiveness and rank dishonesty - I feel as if it's all too convenient for me to find myself also criticizing his tax return behavior, as well as the secrecy that I consider a slap in the face to basic political principles of transparency and disclosure. But again, it's convenient to denounce all this stuff, given the political disagreement part, and I have always had an over-active conscience. (I can feel guilty when I am entirely innocent.)
I thus feel a need to dial it back occasionally, and to bend over backwards to be fair (e.g., with regard to the significance of his possibly having needed to file for an amnesty program in re. his Swiss bank account). I want not only others but myself to perceive me as being scrupulously fair.
Anyway, I was dismayed to have it brought to my attention that I have apparently been quoted at CNN as saying that, although Son-of-BOSS has become iconic as the most infamous abusive tax shelter in U.S. tax history, at the time (1994) perhaps its status was ambiguous.
The worst thing about this quote is that it's accurate and in context on CNN's part. But it's not factually correct about Son-of-BOSS even back then, and it's not what I actually believe. I was just bending over backwards to be fair and not too partisan, given that I don't know a lot of details about Romney's degree of involvement in and responsibility for what Marriott did in 1994. So I felt uneasy about blaming him too much or considering it too indicative of who he is (although it fits the narrative pretty darned well), without my first knowing more.
So I hereby retract what I was accurately quoted as saying. Even in 1994, no competent tax lawyer could in good faith have believed that Son-of-BOSS worked (although this may not have been obvious to anyone who was not a tax expert), and while I still don't know enough to fully judge his true role in all this, I would say that, if he was actively involved and competently advised, it would, in my view, have shown disgusting and immoral behavior on his part. (Plus there would be no reason to think that he has subsequently thought better of it.) But the predicates remain uncertain, at least to me.
Given what we still don't know, it's all the more important to see 10 previous years of tax returns. After all, 1997 through 2001 or so was the high water mark of people like him investing in abusive tax shelters that sent a lot of the promoters to jail. Did Romney, on his own tax return, invest in Son-of-BOSS and other abusive tax shelters, such as CDS (which is hinted at by his 2010 return), back in the day?
Lots of other experts keep on saying he was too smart to do this rotten stuff and thus must have paid some income tax each year. But, despite the uncertainty that he himself has created through his actions, I sure wouldn't bet the house on their being right.
Friday, August 03, 2012
2013 NYU Tax Policy Colloquium
The speakers, although not as yet the weekly schedule, are now set for next winter's NYU Tax Policy Colloquium, which I will be co-running with Bill Gale of the Brookings Institution and Tax Policy Center. In alphabetical order, they will be as follows:
1. Larry Bartels, Vanderbilt U. Dep’t of Political Science
2. Jake Brooks, Georgetown U. Law Center
3. Raj Chetty, Harvard Economics Dep’t
4. Dhammika Dharmapala, U. of Illinois Law School
5. Peter Diamond, MIT Economics Dep’t
6. Lilian Faulhaber, Boston U. School of Law
7. Brian Galle, Boston College Law School
8. Itai Grinberg, Georgetown U. Law Center
9. David Kamin, NYU Law School
10. Sarah Lawsky, U. of California at Irvine School of Law
11. Ed McCaffery, USC Law School
12. Leslie Robinson, Dartmouth Business School
13. Darien Shanske, U. of California at Hastings Law School
14. Alan Viard, American Enterprise Institute
We will be meeting on Tuesdays from 4 to 6 pm, from January 22 through May 7, but with no sessions on February 19 and March 19.
1. Larry Bartels, Vanderbilt U. Dep’t of Political Science
2. Jake Brooks, Georgetown U. Law Center
3. Raj Chetty, Harvard Economics Dep’t
4. Dhammika Dharmapala, U. of Illinois Law School
5. Peter Diamond, MIT Economics Dep’t
6. Lilian Faulhaber, Boston U. School of Law
7. Brian Galle, Boston College Law School
8. Itai Grinberg, Georgetown U. Law Center
9. David Kamin, NYU Law School
10. Sarah Lawsky, U. of California at Irvine School of Law
11. Ed McCaffery, USC Law School
12. Leslie Robinson, Dartmouth Business School
13. Darien Shanske, U. of California at Hastings Law School
14. Alan Viard, American Enterprise Institute
We will be meeting on Tuesdays from 4 to 6 pm, from January 22 through May 7, but with no sessions on February 19 and March 19.
Thursday, August 02, 2012
Sillier and sillier
Romney's Policy Director Lanhee Chen complains that the Tax Policy Center report exposing the regressivity of his tax plan "ignor[es] the reforms that would make America's corporations more
competitive by moving from the highest corporate tax rate in the
industrialized world to one that is comparable to our trading partners."
That is just silly. Suppose we agree that it is good policy to enact corporate tax reform that consisted of lowering the corporate rate and broadening the base. The argument for this is NOT that it would boost short-term economic growth. Indeed, if anything it would have the opposite short-term effect. The problem is that lowering the rate, even if good policy, consists in large part at enactment of a one-time windfall to old capital. After all, the earnings that companies reap this year are generally the fruit of past year's investment decisions - often with up-front deductions at the higher rates applying in past years. Meanwhile, the corporate tax preferences that reform would eliminate are generally targeted to new investment.
Another point: if you lower the corporate rate and broaden the base, causing the effective or average tax rate on corporations to be the same (as is implied by revenue neutrality), you don't necessarily attract new capital that would result in more jobs. (Even if you did, the process would be slow. These things take time.) One of the main things you ARE accomplishing by doing this is that you are increasing companies' willingness to report profits as arising in the U.S., rather than abroad. This may reduce the overall revenue loss, but it isn't about jobs.
Anyway, not to dispute that the corporate tax reform that Romney (as well as Obama) envisions might be a good idea. But to claim that it would have any significant effect on the TPC distributional findings, or create significant jobs in the short run, is ludicrous nonsense.
That is just silly. Suppose we agree that it is good policy to enact corporate tax reform that consisted of lowering the corporate rate and broadening the base. The argument for this is NOT that it would boost short-term economic growth. Indeed, if anything it would have the opposite short-term effect. The problem is that lowering the rate, even if good policy, consists in large part at enactment of a one-time windfall to old capital. After all, the earnings that companies reap this year are generally the fruit of past year's investment decisions - often with up-front deductions at the higher rates applying in past years. Meanwhile, the corporate tax preferences that reform would eliminate are generally targeted to new investment.
Another point: if you lower the corporate rate and broaden the base, causing the effective or average tax rate on corporations to be the same (as is implied by revenue neutrality), you don't necessarily attract new capital that would result in more jobs. (Even if you did, the process would be slow. These things take time.) One of the main things you ARE accomplishing by doing this is that you are increasing companies' willingness to report profits as arising in the U.S., rather than abroad. This may reduce the overall revenue loss, but it isn't about jobs.
Anyway, not to dispute that the corporate tax reform that Romney (as well as Obama) envisions might be a good idea. But to claim that it would have any significant effect on the TPC distributional findings, or create significant jobs in the short run, is ludicrous nonsense.
Peter Orszag at NYU Law School
I guess this is public, since Wikipedia has it. Peter Orszag will be a Distinguished Scholar at NYU Law School during the upcoming academic year. Peter, who is currently vice chairman of global banking at Citigroup, recently served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. He is truly a leading economic policy expert, whose interests include (without being limited to) healthcare, Social Security, and the federal budget, just to name a few. Among other things, he will participate at least occasionally in our Tax Policy Colloquium - at which he presented a paper on Social Security reform, some years ago, and also was a co-author of a paper on refundable tax credits that Lily Batchelder presented.
By the way, we have a pretty good lineup for the colloquium next year (late January through early May 2013, meeting on Tuesdays from 4 to 6 pm), and I will be able to post it shortly.
Perhaps I should try to resist the inclination to add an institutionally self-aggrandizing comment here about how all this only adds to NYU Law School's place as a leading national center for expert tax and related policy discussion, blah blah blah, etcetera. But I suppose you can consider the comment made, and I would certainly consider it justified.
By the way, we have a pretty good lineup for the colloquium next year (late January through early May 2013, meeting on Tuesdays from 4 to 6 pm), and I will be able to post it shortly.
Perhaps I should try to resist the inclination to add an institutionally self-aggrandizing comment here about how all this only adds to NYU Law School's place as a leading national center for expert tax and related policy discussion, blah blah blah, etcetera. But I suppose you can consider the comment made, and I would certainly consider it justified.
The battle concerning the Tax Policy Center report on Romney's tax plan
The ongoing debate over the Tax Policy Center report that showed a tax increase for the bottom 95% of income taxpayers, along with gigantic gains at the top, if Romney's tax reform plan was enacted in accordance with its parameters (including revenue neutrality) is an interesting case study regarding the degree to which the actual truth content of claims ends up mattering in public political debates.
There is really no reasonable way to dispute that the TPC study is at least approximately correct regarding the distributional implications of the Romney tax plan, over the next few years, as it has been described. Of course, if Romney set forth a more detailed plan that differed from the TPC-assumed parameters, one would have to make an estimate as to that. But the bottom line would not change significantly unless the plan differed substantially from its announced parameters (large rate cuts, especially at the top, to be offset by base-broadening that attempted to restore some progressivity but that left alone certain investment related items such as the capital gains and dividend tax rates).
I happen to think that Romney wouldn't increase taxes on the bottom 95% to the extent suggested by the TPC study, but that is because I would expect him to explode the budget deficit instead of actually making the plan revenue-neutral. The TPC study is not in error by reason of its assuming that he would actually do what he says he plans to do. (And of course, what do I know about what they really would do? I am just guessing, like everyone else.)
So how does the Romney campaign respond? Mainly with shoot-the-messenger. These are "leftists," it's a "joke," etcetera, even though everyone knows that TPC is serious, capable, independent, and objective. (Indeed, as has been widely reported, the Romney campaign was happy to cite TPC studies of other Republican candidates' plans.)
Second, economic advisors to the Romney campaign claim that an avalanche of job creation means that the poor and middle class will benefit after all. Never mind that there is no plausible basis, in Romney's reported policy plans, for expecting any such thing. (By the way, it is possible that he might actually be planning to create much greater stimulus than he admits to, through unfunded tax cuts plus an orgy of military spending, perhaps with a new Middle East war thrown in, but that again gets us into speculation about unannounced plans.)
How could the Romney advisors, several of whom I know and respect from other, more academic contexts, live with themselves regarding the deception here? Several ways. First, politics ain't beanbag, and it is a business once you get personally involved. Second, while they must know that what the TPC study says is at least approximately true, they are less averse to these distributional outcomes than are policy types who are more to the left (or, if you prefer, less to the right). Third, they believe that, over a longer time frame, fully financed lower rates will indeed bring efficiency and productivity payoffs that eventually leave everyone better-off. This of course reflects that they tend to have a higher estimate of the efficiency and productivity gains than policy types who are to their left would generally have.
In sum, they consider the regressive results that are exposed by the TPC study to be genuinely worth it over the long haul. If you want to get to a better steady state (as they see it), you've got to start sometime. I happen to disagree with them, because I have different evaluations of both pieces (the short-term distributional cost, and the claimed long-term efficiency payoff). But this is all in the realm of reasonable disagreement.
Unfortunately, however, the actual case that they believe is too hard a sell for a heated presidential campaign. Thus, the Romney campaign must resort instead to shoot-the-messenger regarding the TPC study, plus ridiculous claims about short-term job creation. And this may well succeed in throwing enough dust over the indisputable (as in the old joke, "parties disagree on whether the Sun rose this morning") in order to take the edge off the TPC study's clearly correct finding.
This is a good example of why I wouldn't want to be a policy advisor in a presidential campaign. But I suppose that is a matter of personal taste.
There is really no reasonable way to dispute that the TPC study is at least approximately correct regarding the distributional implications of the Romney tax plan, over the next few years, as it has been described. Of course, if Romney set forth a more detailed plan that differed from the TPC-assumed parameters, one would have to make an estimate as to that. But the bottom line would not change significantly unless the plan differed substantially from its announced parameters (large rate cuts, especially at the top, to be offset by base-broadening that attempted to restore some progressivity but that left alone certain investment related items such as the capital gains and dividend tax rates).
I happen to think that Romney wouldn't increase taxes on the bottom 95% to the extent suggested by the TPC study, but that is because I would expect him to explode the budget deficit instead of actually making the plan revenue-neutral. The TPC study is not in error by reason of its assuming that he would actually do what he says he plans to do. (And of course, what do I know about what they really would do? I am just guessing, like everyone else.)
So how does the Romney campaign respond? Mainly with shoot-the-messenger. These are "leftists," it's a "joke," etcetera, even though everyone knows that TPC is serious, capable, independent, and objective. (Indeed, as has been widely reported, the Romney campaign was happy to cite TPC studies of other Republican candidates' plans.)
Second, economic advisors to the Romney campaign claim that an avalanche of job creation means that the poor and middle class will benefit after all. Never mind that there is no plausible basis, in Romney's reported policy plans, for expecting any such thing. (By the way, it is possible that he might actually be planning to create much greater stimulus than he admits to, through unfunded tax cuts plus an orgy of military spending, perhaps with a new Middle East war thrown in, but that again gets us into speculation about unannounced plans.)
How could the Romney advisors, several of whom I know and respect from other, more academic contexts, live with themselves regarding the deception here? Several ways. First, politics ain't beanbag, and it is a business once you get personally involved. Second, while they must know that what the TPC study says is at least approximately true, they are less averse to these distributional outcomes than are policy types who are more to the left (or, if you prefer, less to the right). Third, they believe that, over a longer time frame, fully financed lower rates will indeed bring efficiency and productivity payoffs that eventually leave everyone better-off. This of course reflects that they tend to have a higher estimate of the efficiency and productivity gains than policy types who are to their left would generally have.
In sum, they consider the regressive results that are exposed by the TPC study to be genuinely worth it over the long haul. If you want to get to a better steady state (as they see it), you've got to start sometime. I happen to disagree with them, because I have different evaluations of both pieces (the short-term distributional cost, and the claimed long-term efficiency payoff). But this is all in the realm of reasonable disagreement.
Unfortunately, however, the actual case that they believe is too hard a sell for a heated presidential campaign. Thus, the Romney campaign must resort instead to shoot-the-messenger regarding the TPC study, plus ridiculous claims about short-term job creation. And this may well succeed in throwing enough dust over the indisputable (as in the old joke, "parties disagree on whether the Sun rose this morning") in order to take the edge off the TPC study's clearly correct finding.
This is a good example of why I wouldn't want to be a policy advisor in a presidential campaign. But I suppose that is a matter of personal taste.
Recent likes
Last week's Louie episode, featuring an unpredictable and often startling date with a bookstore clerk played by Parker Posey; Frank Ocean's Super Rich Kids.
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
New Tax Policy Center reports
The Tax Policy Center has just issued two excellent new reports, both with Bill Gale as co-author or sole author. Since Bill will be my colleague at next year's Tax Policy Colloquium, readers are advised to discount accordingly, if they are so minded.
First, On the Distributional Effects of Base-Broadening Tax Reform (co-authored by Gale with Samuel Brown and Adam Looney) evaluates the distributional effects of a base-broadening, revenue-neutral income tax reform, such as the one that is hinted at in Romney's tax plan. The paper finds that "any revenue-neutral individual income tax change that incorporates the features Governor Romney has proposed would provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers." Indeed, about 95% of individuals would get a tax increase from the Romney plan, if one is willing to credit it (despite the lack of detail) with being actually revenue-neutral.
This finding comes as no surprise. Indeed, it is completely inevitable when one looks at the generally falling ratio of tax preferences to income as the latter heads towards stratospheric levels. (For example, if a homeowner's income goes up tenfold, he or she would be unlikely to move to a house that was ten times as expensive, and thus to claim ten times the previous home mortgage interest deductions even if there were not a statutory ceiling on the loan principal that triggers deductions.)
I have elsewhere expressed great skepticism about the current desirability of 1986-style tax reform, in which the revenue gain from base-broadening is given away to pay for lower individual income tax rates given our long-term fiscal issues and the staggering rise in U.S. inequality over the last 30-plus years. I view the report as confirmatory of my skepticism about the 1986-style approach (which I call a "good idea whose time has passed"), unless one happens to like the distributional outcome of favoring the people at the very top relative to everyone below them.
But then again, I do not believe that Romney, even with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, would pass a revenue-neutral plan. Instead, I would expect the legislation to lower rates significantly, broaden the base only modestly, lose a great deal of revenue, and give people at the top a huge windfall while those at the middle lost little or nothing, at least so far as current-year tax liability was concerned.
The second new Tax Policy Center report, with Gale as sole author, is called The Fiscal Cliff? Let's Pass Right Over It. Here the argument is that the 1/1/13 "fiscal cliff," in which taxes go up with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and automatic spending cuts begin, is actually good long-run policy, at least compared to simply continuing current-year policy. As for the fact that the "fiscal cliff" changes would hurt the short-term economy, that merely calls for enacting other stimulus.
One could put this same point - clearly correct, in my view - as follows. Suppose we take allowing the fiscal cliff changes to take effect as the baseline. Against that baseline, we need stimulus. Of course, given the ongoing unemployment crisis, we already need stimulus today. But the changes would increase the amount of stimulus that is needed. Could anyone seriously maintain that, from the standpoint of optimally designing the extra stimulus, we would have it take the form of extending the Bush tax cuts, etcetera? That view cannot be seriously defended, unless one also favors them as long-term policy.
UPDATE: I see that the two presidential campaigns are sniping at each other with regard to the Gale-Brown-Looney report. Obama used it as evidence that Romney is "asking you to pay more so that people like him can get a big tax cut.” Fair enough if one ignores my surmise that in fact Romney would end up blowing a huge hole in the deficit instead. The Romney campaign replies by disparaging studies from "liberal" groups, but wisely refrains from contesting the report directly.
FURTHER UPDATE: What would be a better defense of the Romney plan (assuming it actually to be revenue-neutral as enacted)? It would have to emphasize the efficiency and growth benefits of lower marginal rates, both in general and at the top end of the income spectrum. Note, however, that constant revenue would imply that average tax rates didn't change overall, which in turn would mean that incentives to earn and save would not increase as much as one might have thought from looking purely at the marginal rate changes.
First, On the Distributional Effects of Base-Broadening Tax Reform (co-authored by Gale with Samuel Brown and Adam Looney) evaluates the distributional effects of a base-broadening, revenue-neutral income tax reform, such as the one that is hinted at in Romney's tax plan. The paper finds that "any revenue-neutral individual income tax change that incorporates the features Governor Romney has proposed would provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers." Indeed, about 95% of individuals would get a tax increase from the Romney plan, if one is willing to credit it (despite the lack of detail) with being actually revenue-neutral.
This finding comes as no surprise. Indeed, it is completely inevitable when one looks at the generally falling ratio of tax preferences to income as the latter heads towards stratospheric levels. (For example, if a homeowner's income goes up tenfold, he or she would be unlikely to move to a house that was ten times as expensive, and thus to claim ten times the previous home mortgage interest deductions even if there were not a statutory ceiling on the loan principal that triggers deductions.)
I have elsewhere expressed great skepticism about the current desirability of 1986-style tax reform, in which the revenue gain from base-broadening is given away to pay for lower individual income tax rates given our long-term fiscal issues and the staggering rise in U.S. inequality over the last 30-plus years. I view the report as confirmatory of my skepticism about the 1986-style approach (which I call a "good idea whose time has passed"), unless one happens to like the distributional outcome of favoring the people at the very top relative to everyone below them.
But then again, I do not believe that Romney, even with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, would pass a revenue-neutral plan. Instead, I would expect the legislation to lower rates significantly, broaden the base only modestly, lose a great deal of revenue, and give people at the top a huge windfall while those at the middle lost little or nothing, at least so far as current-year tax liability was concerned.
The second new Tax Policy Center report, with Gale as sole author, is called The Fiscal Cliff? Let's Pass Right Over It. Here the argument is that the 1/1/13 "fiscal cliff," in which taxes go up with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and automatic spending cuts begin, is actually good long-run policy, at least compared to simply continuing current-year policy. As for the fact that the "fiscal cliff" changes would hurt the short-term economy, that merely calls for enacting other stimulus.
One could put this same point - clearly correct, in my view - as follows. Suppose we take allowing the fiscal cliff changes to take effect as the baseline. Against that baseline, we need stimulus. Of course, given the ongoing unemployment crisis, we already need stimulus today. But the changes would increase the amount of stimulus that is needed. Could anyone seriously maintain that, from the standpoint of optimally designing the extra stimulus, we would have it take the form of extending the Bush tax cuts, etcetera? That view cannot be seriously defended, unless one also favors them as long-term policy.
UPDATE: I see that the two presidential campaigns are sniping at each other with regard to the Gale-Brown-Looney report. Obama used it as evidence that Romney is "asking you to pay more so that people like him can get a big tax cut.” Fair enough if one ignores my surmise that in fact Romney would end up blowing a huge hole in the deficit instead. The Romney campaign replies by disparaging studies from "liberal" groups, but wisely refrains from contesting the report directly.
FURTHER UPDATE: What would be a better defense of the Romney plan (assuming it actually to be revenue-neutral as enacted)? It would have to emphasize the efficiency and growth benefits of lower marginal rates, both in general and at the top end of the income spectrum. Note, however, that constant revenue would imply that average tax rates didn't change overall, which in turn would mean that incentives to earn and save would not increase as much as one might have thought from looking purely at the marginal rate changes.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Others weigh in on Romney's tax returns
Two articles today add important elements to the discussion of Romney's tax returns and his resistance to disclosure.
In the New York Times, Michael Graetz notes that "it is a good bet that Mr. Romney’s vetters have picked through more than two years of returns of his vice-presidential contenders. And the Senate typically requires more for confirmation to a cabinet or even a subcabinet post."
In addition, Graetz notes suggestive evidence creating a possible inference that Romney should have faced penalties (though one doubts they were actually levied) in connection with transferring to his sons financial assets that are now worth $100 million:
"Based on his aggressive tax planning, revealed in the 2010 returns he has released and his approval of a notably dicey tax avoidance strategy in 1994 when he headed the audit committee of the board of Marriott International, my bet is that — if Mr. Romney filed a gift tax return for these transfers at all — he put a low or even zero value on the gifts, certainly a small fraction of the price at which he would have sold the transferred assets to an unrelated party. Otherwise, he should be happy to release his gift tax returns. According to a partner at Mr. Romney’s trustee’s law firm, valuing carried interests, such as Mr. Romney’s interests in the private equity company Bain Capital, at zero for gift tax purposes was common advice given to clients like Mr. Romney in the 1990s and early 2000s.
"If detected, undervaluing large gifts to one’s children could provoke large penalties from the I.R.S. These are the kinds of tax penalties that even multinational corporations try to avoid because they fear how the public would react to the adverse publicity that would inevitably follow.
"To settle these questions, Mr. Romney should release his gift tax returns, or other documents showing how he valued his transfers to his family’s trust and to his I.R.A., and at least three additional years of income tax returns."
Meanwhile, in Forbes, Janet Novack focuses on an aspect of Romney's public rationalizations for his aggressive tax planning that has rankled both me and others with whom I've discussed the issues, but that had not as yet (to my knowledge) been addressed fully by anyone.
First she quotes a recent Romney TV interview in which he said: "I don’t pay more [taxes] than are legally due and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don’t think I’d be qualified to become president. I’d think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires."
The false implication here is that Romney simply mechanically or passively paid what was due under the law. Why should he, say, pay $10 million if the tax tables show that he only owes $5 million? But, as Novack notes, this amounts in actual practice to Romney's claiming that he has a "duty to exploit every tax loophole." She further adds:
"Unless Romney was joking ... it suggests he is either ignorant of the practical functioning (and malfunctioning) of our tax system; hopes the American public is ignorant of it; or has bought into an aggressive approach to tax-compliance that contributes to the tax mess.
"If you’re a simple wage-earner, as most of us are, there’s generally one correct answer about how much you owe in federal income tax. You might take advantage of more tax breaks than your neighbor–for example, electing to make bigger contributions to a pre-tax 401(k). But there’s not a lot of wiggle room in calculating what you owe. Unless you’ve entered the numbers incorrectly (or are confused about some issue the way Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he was), Intuit’s TurboTax should give you the same answer as H&R Block’s AtHome and it should be pretty much the same as what the IRS would calculate.
"But when you are as wealthy as Romney, with as many business interests as he has, there are lots of judgment calls that get made involving how your investments are structured and reported—judgments that can increase or decrease a tax bill. What 'the tax code requires' and what’s allowed can be debatable. It is up to a taxpayer (in consultation with his tax pro) to decide how aggressive he wants to be and how many of the grey issues he decides in his own favor ….
"The attitude in some sophisticated circles that folks are chumps (or even negligent) if they don’t structure their affairs to exploit every possible provision of the tax code in ways Congress intended (and didn’t) creates a climate that allows abusive tax shelters to flourish and undermines the functioning of the tax code (which, granted, is plenty dysfunctional on its own.)"
Even without releasing more returns, Romney had made it clear as day where he stands on all this.
In the New York Times, Michael Graetz notes that "it is a good bet that Mr. Romney’s vetters have picked through more than two years of returns of his vice-presidential contenders. And the Senate typically requires more for confirmation to a cabinet or even a subcabinet post."
In addition, Graetz notes suggestive evidence creating a possible inference that Romney should have faced penalties (though one doubts they were actually levied) in connection with transferring to his sons financial assets that are now worth $100 million:
"Based on his aggressive tax planning, revealed in the 2010 returns he has released and his approval of a notably dicey tax avoidance strategy in 1994 when he headed the audit committee of the board of Marriott International, my bet is that — if Mr. Romney filed a gift tax return for these transfers at all — he put a low or even zero value on the gifts, certainly a small fraction of the price at which he would have sold the transferred assets to an unrelated party. Otherwise, he should be happy to release his gift tax returns. According to a partner at Mr. Romney’s trustee’s law firm, valuing carried interests, such as Mr. Romney’s interests in the private equity company Bain Capital, at zero for gift tax purposes was common advice given to clients like Mr. Romney in the 1990s and early 2000s.
"If detected, undervaluing large gifts to one’s children could provoke large penalties from the I.R.S. These are the kinds of tax penalties that even multinational corporations try to avoid because they fear how the public would react to the adverse publicity that would inevitably follow.
"To settle these questions, Mr. Romney should release his gift tax returns, or other documents showing how he valued his transfers to his family’s trust and to his I.R.A., and at least three additional years of income tax returns."
Meanwhile, in Forbes, Janet Novack focuses on an aspect of Romney's public rationalizations for his aggressive tax planning that has rankled both me and others with whom I've discussed the issues, but that had not as yet (to my knowledge) been addressed fully by anyone.
First she quotes a recent Romney TV interview in which he said: "I don’t pay more [taxes] than are legally due and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don’t think I’d be qualified to become president. I’d think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires."
The false implication here is that Romney simply mechanically or passively paid what was due under the law. Why should he, say, pay $10 million if the tax tables show that he only owes $5 million? But, as Novack notes, this amounts in actual practice to Romney's claiming that he has a "duty to exploit every tax loophole." She further adds:
"Unless Romney was joking ... it suggests he is either ignorant of the practical functioning (and malfunctioning) of our tax system; hopes the American public is ignorant of it; or has bought into an aggressive approach to tax-compliance that contributes to the tax mess.
"If you’re a simple wage-earner, as most of us are, there’s generally one correct answer about how much you owe in federal income tax. You might take advantage of more tax breaks than your neighbor–for example, electing to make bigger contributions to a pre-tax 401(k). But there’s not a lot of wiggle room in calculating what you owe. Unless you’ve entered the numbers incorrectly (or are confused about some issue the way Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he was), Intuit’s TurboTax should give you the same answer as H&R Block’s AtHome and it should be pretty much the same as what the IRS would calculate.
"But when you are as wealthy as Romney, with as many business interests as he has, there are lots of judgment calls that get made involving how your investments are structured and reported—judgments that can increase or decrease a tax bill. What 'the tax code requires' and what’s allowed can be debatable. It is up to a taxpayer (in consultation with his tax pro) to decide how aggressive he wants to be and how many of the grey issues he decides in his own favor ….
"The attitude in some sophisticated circles that folks are chumps (or even negligent) if they don’t structure their affairs to exploit every possible provision of the tax code in ways Congress intended (and didn’t) creates a climate that allows abusive tax shelters to flourish and undermines the functioning of the tax code (which, granted, is plenty dysfunctional on its own.)"
Even without releasing more returns, Romney had made it clear as day where he stands on all this.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Domestic and foreign policy under a President Romney
In response to Michael Tomasky’s Newsweek cover story, “Mitt Romney’s Wimp Factor,” liberal blogger Ed Kilgore argues the following:
“Precisely because conservatives have abundant reasons not to trust him, along with abundant reasons to believe they can bully him, Romney will perpetually be in what I call the “primary phase” of his political career. And that will make him a weak president who is never quite the leader of his own political party. That’s why I was suggesting in an earlier post today that whatever names appear on the signs at the Republican Convention in Tampa and on the bumper stickers of all those red-state SUVs, the real ticket is Ryan-Romney. This has nothing to do with Romney’s ‘manliness’ or ‘wimpiness,’ and everything to do with the devil’s bargain that’s brought him to the brink of his Oval Office dreams. “
This of course was Grover Norquist’s point several months back – that it really wouldn’t matter whether or not a newly elected Republican president (clearly meaning Romney) actually agreed with the Ryan approach, since all he has to do is not veto the legislation that two Republican-led houses would send him after shutting down any Senate Democratic effort at a Senate filibuster. (BTW, I continue to believe that, even in this scenario, the Republicans would be sufficiently leery of public opinion not to take any major whacks either at tax expenditures or at Social Security and Medicare spending over the next five to ten years. But I know some Republicans who disagree with this prediction.)
But there is one thing being left out in this scenario – foreign policy, where Romney would have a free hand, at least so far as military action is concerned.
In that light, consider the following warning at the end of Tomasky’s article:
“But if Romney is elected? Be nervous. A Republican sure of his manhood had nothing to prove. Reagan was happy with a jolly little shoot-up in Grenada, and eventually he settled down to the serious work of arms control, consummating historic treaties with Mikhail Gorbachev. But a weenie Republican – look out. He has something to prove, needs to reassert that ‘natural’ advantage [i.e., the Republicans’ claim to be stronger than the Democrats on national security grounds]. That spells trouble more often than not.”
Even without the pop psychology, this strikes me as a very plausible account of where Romney may conclude that he needs to go – especially considering his rhetoric, behavior, apparent beliefs, and choice of associates in the foreign policy realm so far.
“Precisely because conservatives have abundant reasons not to trust him, along with abundant reasons to believe they can bully him, Romney will perpetually be in what I call the “primary phase” of his political career. And that will make him a weak president who is never quite the leader of his own political party. That’s why I was suggesting in an earlier post today that whatever names appear on the signs at the Republican Convention in Tampa and on the bumper stickers of all those red-state SUVs, the real ticket is Ryan-Romney. This has nothing to do with Romney’s ‘manliness’ or ‘wimpiness,’ and everything to do with the devil’s bargain that’s brought him to the brink of his Oval Office dreams. “
This of course was Grover Norquist’s point several months back – that it really wouldn’t matter whether or not a newly elected Republican president (clearly meaning Romney) actually agreed with the Ryan approach, since all he has to do is not veto the legislation that two Republican-led houses would send him after shutting down any Senate Democratic effort at a Senate filibuster. (BTW, I continue to believe that, even in this scenario, the Republicans would be sufficiently leery of public opinion not to take any major whacks either at tax expenditures or at Social Security and Medicare spending over the next five to ten years. But I know some Republicans who disagree with this prediction.)
But there is one thing being left out in this scenario – foreign policy, where Romney would have a free hand, at least so far as military action is concerned.
In that light, consider the following warning at the end of Tomasky’s article:
“But if Romney is elected? Be nervous. A Republican sure of his manhood had nothing to prove. Reagan was happy with a jolly little shoot-up in Grenada, and eventually he settled down to the serious work of arms control, consummating historic treaties with Mikhail Gorbachev. But a weenie Republican – look out. He has something to prove, needs to reassert that ‘natural’ advantage [i.e., the Republicans’ claim to be stronger than the Democrats on national security grounds]. That spells trouble more often than not.”
Even without the pop psychology, this strikes me as a very plausible account of where Romney may conclude that he needs to go – especially considering his rhetoric, behavior, apparent beliefs, and choice of associates in the foreign policy realm so far.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
New publication
The International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation (IBFD), which is centered in the Netherlands but also has a U.S. office (contact info for both is available here), has just published a new volume, edited by Otto Mares and Dennis Weber, entitled "Taxing the Financial Sector: Financial Taxes, Bank Levies and More," available here either in-print or on-line.
It contains the papers associated with an excellent conference that was held in Amsterdam on December 9, 2011, at which I presented a first draft of my paper on the financial transactions tax and the financial activities tax. I blogged about the conference here, and the (later) version of my paper that was published in Tax Notes is available here. The IBFD volume has an earlier version of my paper, as I couldn't update it fully within the time window for going final, but there are also a number of other articles in the IBFD volume that academics, students, policymakers, and practtioners who are interested in financial sector taxation may want to see.
The other authors of papers in the volume are Oskar Henkow (Lund University), Martine Peters (IBFD, Amsterdam), Barry Larking (KPMG, Netherlands), Catalinia Hoyos Jimenez (U. Rosario, Bogota), Liesl Fichardt (Berwin Leighton Paisner, London), Paolo Ludovici and Mario Tenore (Maisto e Associati, Milan), Vincent van der Lans (Loyens & Loeff, Amsterdam), Daniel S. Smit (Tilburg University), Raymond H.C. Luja (Maastricht University), Rene van der Paardt (Erasmus University), and Thornton Matheson (IMF).
The volume is highly informative on financial sector taxes, not just in Europe (although that is the main focus), but also around the world.
It contains the papers associated with an excellent conference that was held in Amsterdam on December 9, 2011, at which I presented a first draft of my paper on the financial transactions tax and the financial activities tax. I blogged about the conference here, and the (later) version of my paper that was published in Tax Notes is available here. The IBFD volume has an earlier version of my paper, as I couldn't update it fully within the time window for going final, but there are also a number of other articles in the IBFD volume that academics, students, policymakers, and practtioners who are interested in financial sector taxation may want to see.
The other authors of papers in the volume are Oskar Henkow (Lund University), Martine Peters (IBFD, Amsterdam), Barry Larking (KPMG, Netherlands), Catalinia Hoyos Jimenez (U. Rosario, Bogota), Liesl Fichardt (Berwin Leighton Paisner, London), Paolo Ludovici and Mario Tenore (Maisto e Associati, Milan), Vincent van der Lans (Loyens & Loeff, Amsterdam), Daniel S. Smit (Tilburg University), Raymond H.C. Luja (Maastricht University), Rene van der Paardt (Erasmus University), and Thornton Matheson (IMF).
The volume is highly informative on financial sector taxes, not just in Europe (although that is the main focus), but also around the world.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Is Apple deliberately understating its earnings?
This MSNB story by Peter Svensson offers an interesting twist on U.S. companies' - or more specifically Apple's - international tax planning, and on an important interaction between U.S. tax and U.S. accounting rules.
The usual story, of course, is that U.S. multinationals defer U.S. tax by playing tax planning and reporting games to locate the income in tax havens. But for publicly traded companies, there's a problem. In theory, they will eventually have to pay the tax upon repatriating the earnings to the U.S.
What is more, if this is certain to happen and the U.S. repatriation tax rate will always be the same, they actually don't reduce the present value of the tax liability by deferring the repatriation. This is what the "new view" of dividend repatriations tell us - and it is a mathematically provable tautology under its assumptions. It does not, of course, refute the point that it's better to have further earnings on the earnings accrue in a low-tax foreign environment than in the higher-tax domestic one, but that's a separate issue. And the new view conclusion does not apply if one will never have to repatriate the funds, or if the future repatriation tax rate will be lower than the present one (e.g., in the case where it is zero, due to the adoption of a territorial tax system without transition features that result in collecting deferred taxes to date).
Anyway, back to the accounting bit. Even though it is often plausible to think that repatriation is in fact greatly reducing the expected negative value (if any) of the deferred tax, accounting rules have a practice of frequently ignoring time value benefits. Thus, a publicly traded company generally gets no earnings boost whatsoever from parking its earnings in a tax haven, given that the U.S. tax will be counted in full as if payable today. But - if you say that particular earnings are permanently reinvested abroad, and if your accountants believe you, then you can treat the deferred taxes on those earnings as worth zero, and hence as not requiring any reduction of your pre-tax earnings by reason of U.S. international income taxation.
Publicly traded companies tend to love this. Indeed, it's a key reason why they are so reluctant to repatriate foreign earnings, even if they could use the cash in the U.S. It would result in a negative accounting hit if done with "permanently reinvested" earnings (PRE), and what's more might lead their accountants to question more rigorously whether they should accept the PRE label for other money that remains abroad.
OK, that's enough windup, on to the pitch concerning Apple. The fun thing about the MSNBC article that I linked above is that it shows Apple to be doing the opposite. Apple has billions of dollars in profits parked in tax havens, which a knowledgeable individual (although he has no association with Apple) recently told me that he believes they will NEVER bring home to the U.S. if it costs U.S. tax. But they have declined to seek the PRE label. So their reported earnings are billions of dollars too low, compared to the likely reality.
They do this, apparently, so that they will look like good corporate citizens. After all, if you look at their financial statements, it shows them paying substantial U.S. taxes that they are not actually paying, given the current deferral and the fact that it may end up being permanent.
In the meantime, they are lobbying for the enactment of an exemption system that, if done without the transition hit, would give them a positive reported earnings shock of many billions of dollars, in addition to giving them full U.S. access to the overseas funds without a tax hit.
Under-reporting earnings, in order to over-report U.S. taxes paid and look like a good citizen, accompanied with the political aim of getting those taxes eliminated - that is unusual. No wonder that those guys are also smart enough to keep on making products that people such as me are eager to buy. (I am waiting for the new iPhone 5, as my prehistoric 3 is limping along pretty feebly at this point.)
The usual story, of course, is that U.S. multinationals defer U.S. tax by playing tax planning and reporting games to locate the income in tax havens. But for publicly traded companies, there's a problem. In theory, they will eventually have to pay the tax upon repatriating the earnings to the U.S.
What is more, if this is certain to happen and the U.S. repatriation tax rate will always be the same, they actually don't reduce the present value of the tax liability by deferring the repatriation. This is what the "new view" of dividend repatriations tell us - and it is a mathematically provable tautology under its assumptions. It does not, of course, refute the point that it's better to have further earnings on the earnings accrue in a low-tax foreign environment than in the higher-tax domestic one, but that's a separate issue. And the new view conclusion does not apply if one will never have to repatriate the funds, or if the future repatriation tax rate will be lower than the present one (e.g., in the case where it is zero, due to the adoption of a territorial tax system without transition features that result in collecting deferred taxes to date).
Anyway, back to the accounting bit. Even though it is often plausible to think that repatriation is in fact greatly reducing the expected negative value (if any) of the deferred tax, accounting rules have a practice of frequently ignoring time value benefits. Thus, a publicly traded company generally gets no earnings boost whatsoever from parking its earnings in a tax haven, given that the U.S. tax will be counted in full as if payable today. But - if you say that particular earnings are permanently reinvested abroad, and if your accountants believe you, then you can treat the deferred taxes on those earnings as worth zero, and hence as not requiring any reduction of your pre-tax earnings by reason of U.S. international income taxation.
Publicly traded companies tend to love this. Indeed, it's a key reason why they are so reluctant to repatriate foreign earnings, even if they could use the cash in the U.S. It would result in a negative accounting hit if done with "permanently reinvested" earnings (PRE), and what's more might lead their accountants to question more rigorously whether they should accept the PRE label for other money that remains abroad.
OK, that's enough windup, on to the pitch concerning Apple. The fun thing about the MSNBC article that I linked above is that it shows Apple to be doing the opposite. Apple has billions of dollars in profits parked in tax havens, which a knowledgeable individual (although he has no association with Apple) recently told me that he believes they will NEVER bring home to the U.S. if it costs U.S. tax. But they have declined to seek the PRE label. So their reported earnings are billions of dollars too low, compared to the likely reality.
They do this, apparently, so that they will look like good corporate citizens. After all, if you look at their financial statements, it shows them paying substantial U.S. taxes that they are not actually paying, given the current deferral and the fact that it may end up being permanent.
In the meantime, they are lobbying for the enactment of an exemption system that, if done without the transition hit, would give them a positive reported earnings shock of many billions of dollars, in addition to giving them full U.S. access to the overseas funds without a tax hit.
Under-reporting earnings, in order to over-report U.S. taxes paid and look like a good citizen, accompanied with the political aim of getting those taxes eliminated - that is unusual. No wonder that those guys are also smart enough to keep on making products that people such as me are eager to buy. (I am waiting for the new iPhone 5, as my prehistoric 3 is limping along pretty feebly at this point.)
Appearance today on Mike Huckabee's radio show
I am scheduled to speak with Governor Mike Huckabee on his radio show today, at 12:32 EST, for up to fifteen minutes. The show is carried nationwide on Cumulus Media Networks, and a link to it is available here.
The topic will be tax havens for the super-rich, with particular reference to the recently issued report by the Tax Justice Network suggesting that $21 trillion to $32 trillion of unreported private financial wealth from around the world is parked in tax havens.
UPDATE: That was fun. I found Huckabee quite engaging and open-minded to talk with. He even let me make a few points that I am always glad to get to communicate to larger audiences. (As talk show hosts go, definitely a listener rather than a ranter.) One is that progressivity and the choice of tax base (income vs. consumption) are different issues. He mentioned the FAIR tax, and said he likes it but maybe I don't. I replied that I have two objections to it, one being its use of a retail sales tax rather than a VAT methodology to implement consumption taxation, which I called really the same thing except that the VAT is easier to enforce, and the other being the rate structure. Then he asked a follow-up and I was able to briefly describe the consumed income tax and the David Bradford X-tax (modifying the flat tax) as available progressive consumption tax vehicles. Romney came up very briefly at the end, but was by no means the focus.
FURTHER UPDATE: You can download the soundfile here.
The topic will be tax havens for the super-rich, with particular reference to the recently issued report by the Tax Justice Network suggesting that $21 trillion to $32 trillion of unreported private financial wealth from around the world is parked in tax havens.
UPDATE: That was fun. I found Huckabee quite engaging and open-minded to talk with. He even let me make a few points that I am always glad to get to communicate to larger audiences. (As talk show hosts go, definitely a listener rather than a ranter.) One is that progressivity and the choice of tax base (income vs. consumption) are different issues. He mentioned the FAIR tax, and said he likes it but maybe I don't. I replied that I have two objections to it, one being its use of a retail sales tax rather than a VAT methodology to implement consumption taxation, which I called really the same thing except that the VAT is easier to enforce, and the other being the rate structure. Then he asked a follow-up and I was able to briefly describe the consumed income tax and the David Bradford X-tax (modifying the flat tax) as available progressive consumption tax vehicles. Romney came up very briefly at the end, but was by no means the focus.
FURTHER UPDATE: You can download the soundfile here.
More possibilities re. the Swiss bank account
Brian Beutler at Talking Points Memo reports on some speculation that I offered regarding the Swiss bank account, and in particular the possibility that Romney may have needed to participate in the IRS amnesty program (which has more recently been denied, but hadn't been addressed yet when we spoke):
"Theory #2: Romney and his financial advisers lost track of the Swiss account.
"I know that sounds implausible but stay with me here....
"Daniel Shaviro ... floats this theory: What if Romney’s ... money managers simply overlooked the trivial interest he earned on this account until the federal government came knocking at UBS’ door.
“'Obviously, no one would use a Swiss bank account primarily in order to avoid U.S. tax on one’s interest income, at so low a rate of return,' Shaviro told me. 'You might have a case where the tax guys in his operation weren’t consulted on the Swiss bank account, since it wasn’t done for tax reasons, and didn’t learn about or at least prioritize it.'
“'[H]e was earning relatively trivial interest from the account. … This suggests to me that the interest may have been a side issue, and not have gotten the serious attention that he and his people no doubt gave to the [Individual Retirement Account], the Caymans entities, etcetera,' Shaviro speculates.
"Whatever Romney’s investment team may or may not have been telling his tax team, presumably at some point his political team got wind of the Swiss bank account and recognized how damaging it could be to his presidential ambitions. But because Romney has refused to release more information about his finances, answers to questions about his wealth, and particularly about this one account, are black boxed. That’s left him vulnerable to a slow drip of dark-toned speculation from his political enemies. As the experts I’ve spoken to suggest, there could be less nefarious explanations that place Romney on the right side of the law — but still expose to public scrutiny the tax avoidance schemes Romney used and that are only available to the very wealthiest Americans."
"Theory #2: Romney and his financial advisers lost track of the Swiss account.
"I know that sounds implausible but stay with me here....
"Daniel Shaviro ... floats this theory: What if Romney’s ... money managers simply overlooked the trivial interest he earned on this account until the federal government came knocking at UBS’ door.
“'Obviously, no one would use a Swiss bank account primarily in order to avoid U.S. tax on one’s interest income, at so low a rate of return,' Shaviro told me. 'You might have a case where the tax guys in his operation weren’t consulted on the Swiss bank account, since it wasn’t done for tax reasons, and didn’t learn about or at least prioritize it.'
“'[H]e was earning relatively trivial interest from the account. … This suggests to me that the interest may have been a side issue, and not have gotten the serious attention that he and his people no doubt gave to the [Individual Retirement Account], the Caymans entities, etcetera,' Shaviro speculates.
"Whatever Romney’s investment team may or may not have been telling his tax team, presumably at some point his political team got wind of the Swiss bank account and recognized how damaging it could be to his presidential ambitions. But because Romney has refused to release more information about his finances, answers to questions about his wealth, and particularly about this one account, are black boxed. That’s left him vulnerable to a slow drip of dark-toned speculation from his political enemies. As the experts I’ve spoken to suggest, there could be less nefarious explanations that place Romney on the right side of the law — but still expose to public scrutiny the tax avoidance schemes Romney used and that are only available to the very wealthiest Americans."
Monday, July 23, 2012
First mention for a while
"Young D.C. lawyer Bill Doberman, who fancies himself the James Bond of
the Potomac. is a liar, a conniver, a phony, a hypocrite, and a cad -
and those are his good points. But will they be enough to win him the
much desired booby prize of partnership at Ashby & Cinders?
"He will need all his skills to out-compete the dour Lowell Stellworth, languid yet fanatical master of the lengthy footnote, while also dodging hostile senior partners, posing as an arts connoisseur, and keeping his two girlfriends at the firm from finding out about each other. All this in the hope of qualifying at the end for even longer hours and a pay cut."
... From the description of my novel Getting It, which seems to have registered a Kindle sale yesterday. Act now while virtual supplies last. It only costs $3.99 on Kindle, and has received a number of highly favorable or even rave reviews, if I do say so myself, such as here, here, here, here, and here.
"He will need all his skills to out-compete the dour Lowell Stellworth, languid yet fanatical master of the lengthy footnote, while also dodging hostile senior partners, posing as an arts connoisseur, and keeping his two girlfriends at the firm from finding out about each other. All this in the hope of qualifying at the end for even longer hours and a pay cut."
... From the description of my novel Getting It, which seems to have registered a Kindle sale yesterday. Act now while virtual supplies last. It only costs $3.99 on Kindle, and has received a number of highly favorable or even rave reviews, if I do say so myself, such as here, here, here, here, and here.
Speak of wasteful government spending ...
According to this GAO report, last year's delay in raising the Federal debt limit, by reason of Congressional brinkmanship, "led to an increase in the Treasury's borrowing costs of $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2011," and will continue to cost us money in the future.
This was not even a transfer (to the U.S. and foreign investors who would have been paid less interest otherwise) - it was purely waste, since the investors were merely being compensated for uncertainty about whether and when they'd be paid.
This was not even a transfer (to the U.S. and foreign investors who would have been paid less interest otherwise) - it was purely waste, since the investors were merely being compensated for uncertainty about whether and when they'd be paid.
Friday, July 20, 2012
2010 Romney tax return story
Interesting story today by Ryan Grim and Zach Carter at the Huffington Post. They report that, in 2010, "Mitt Romney saved himself hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes in 2010 by transferring stock in two companies from his personal account to a nonprofit entity he set up. The stock maneuver included $172,397 in shares of Sensata Technologies, a company now under fire for a high-profile effort to offshore central Illinois jobs to China ....
"Romney had received the Sensata stock as part of a Bain payout; he listed no cost for it on his tax return. By transferring that stock to his nonprofit Tyler Charitable Foundation, he avoided roughly $25,000 in capital gains taxes he would have owed. He also shaved an additional $50,000 off his tax bill by deducting the charitable contribution from his income....
"Romney also transferred about $1.3 million worth of stock in Domino's Pizza to his nonprofit, which shaved about $600,000 off his tax bill. He reported paying nothing for the pizza shares, having acquired them as part of Bain's takeover of the company."
Let's leave the offshoring to one side, as I accept that the shifting around of global capital both is hard to fight and in the long run (at least, with appropriate safety net policies at home) is generally net-beneficial to all countries. There are several interesting tax angles here, if I correctly understand what Grim and Carter have found.
The main tax advantages to Romney that the article points to are as follows. First, there is a very poorly conceived rule for charitable contributions, under which you get to deduct the full value of a gift of appreciated property even though you have never paid tax on the appreciation. Thus, if I get invited to participate in some great IPO, and buy a share of stock for $1, then I give it to a charity when its value has increased to $1 million, I get to deduct the full $1 million even though I never paid tax on the appreciation and am only out of pocket $1. The only plausible rationale for this rule - that we want to encourage charitable contributions by allowing more than the out-of-pocket cost to be deducted - would apply equally to cash gifts.
The fact that Romney took advantage of this rule is fair game for commentary, insofar as it helps expose how the tax system works for very rich people, but it is certainly plain vanilla tax planning that no one would complain about as such.
The other rule he seems to have taken advantage of pertains to charitable foundations. Here the complaint is that he got a deduction today for stock that he may still have been effectively controlling, via any influence he could wield regarding who would end up getting the use of the donation. On the other hand, he had, presumably, irrevocably committed the value to charitable, rather than personal, use. Once again, I wouldn't regard this as unduly aggressive tax planning by Romney (and I could certainly see doing it myself if I were in his economic position), but it does give us a window on the opportunities that very wealthy people have for fun and games under the existing tax code.
By the way, he wouldn't have faced capital gains tax just because he held stock that was worth more than its basis, unless he would otherwise have sold it for a profit. So if the alternative to the Sensata gift was keeping it in his portfolio, the actual transaction didn't enable him to avoid capital gains tax that he would otherwise have paid.
What I find most mysterious about the story - and which connects to the mystery of the $20 million to $100 million in his IRA - is the assertion, which I assume comes straight from attachments to the 2010 return, that the Sensata and Domino's stock had a zero basis to Romney. That I find quite strange. If he got Sensata stock for free as part of a Bain payout, its value at the time of the transfer should have been included in his taxable income. Then it would have had a cost basis equal to that value. The charitable deduction would have been the same (since it depends on value, not basis), but his taxable income for the year when he got the stock (including if it was 2010) would have been higher. How credible is it that the stock was actually worth zero when he got it? Would have sold it to you or me for zero?
Similar question for the Domino's stock. If he acquired it via a tax-free reorganization, it would presumably have a carryover basis (i.e., the same basis it had in the hands of the prior owners). Was that zero? But suppose that Bain initially held the Domino's stock with a zero basis (or indeed with any other basis). If it transferred the stock to Romney as part of a compensatory payout, then the same analysis as that for the Sensata stock, based on value at the time of the transfer, would apply.
In sum, we have two tax planning details - pertaining to charitable gifts of appreciated property and to the rules for charitable foundations - that were clearly permissible tax planning, although they do shed light both on the state of the law and on Romney's willingness to use it to personal advantage (in ways that I freely admit I would do, too, in his position).
But the zero basis listed for the Sensata and Domino's stock strikes me as more mysterious, and as raising the questions of whether (a) he under-reported taxable income upon receiving the stock, and (b) he had a general practice of unduly low-balling the value of high-upside stock when this was tax-beneficial to him.
"Romney had received the Sensata stock as part of a Bain payout; he listed no cost for it on his tax return. By transferring that stock to his nonprofit Tyler Charitable Foundation, he avoided roughly $25,000 in capital gains taxes he would have owed. He also shaved an additional $50,000 off his tax bill by deducting the charitable contribution from his income....
"Romney also transferred about $1.3 million worth of stock in Domino's Pizza to his nonprofit, which shaved about $600,000 off his tax bill. He reported paying nothing for the pizza shares, having acquired them as part of Bain's takeover of the company."
Let's leave the offshoring to one side, as I accept that the shifting around of global capital both is hard to fight and in the long run (at least, with appropriate safety net policies at home) is generally net-beneficial to all countries. There are several interesting tax angles here, if I correctly understand what Grim and Carter have found.
The main tax advantages to Romney that the article points to are as follows. First, there is a very poorly conceived rule for charitable contributions, under which you get to deduct the full value of a gift of appreciated property even though you have never paid tax on the appreciation. Thus, if I get invited to participate in some great IPO, and buy a share of stock for $1, then I give it to a charity when its value has increased to $1 million, I get to deduct the full $1 million even though I never paid tax on the appreciation and am only out of pocket $1. The only plausible rationale for this rule - that we want to encourage charitable contributions by allowing more than the out-of-pocket cost to be deducted - would apply equally to cash gifts.
The fact that Romney took advantage of this rule is fair game for commentary, insofar as it helps expose how the tax system works for very rich people, but it is certainly plain vanilla tax planning that no one would complain about as such.
The other rule he seems to have taken advantage of pertains to charitable foundations. Here the complaint is that he got a deduction today for stock that he may still have been effectively controlling, via any influence he could wield regarding who would end up getting the use of the donation. On the other hand, he had, presumably, irrevocably committed the value to charitable, rather than personal, use. Once again, I wouldn't regard this as unduly aggressive tax planning by Romney (and I could certainly see doing it myself if I were in his economic position), but it does give us a window on the opportunities that very wealthy people have for fun and games under the existing tax code.
By the way, he wouldn't have faced capital gains tax just because he held stock that was worth more than its basis, unless he would otherwise have sold it for a profit. So if the alternative to the Sensata gift was keeping it in his portfolio, the actual transaction didn't enable him to avoid capital gains tax that he would otherwise have paid.
What I find most mysterious about the story - and which connects to the mystery of the $20 million to $100 million in his IRA - is the assertion, which I assume comes straight from attachments to the 2010 return, that the Sensata and Domino's stock had a zero basis to Romney. That I find quite strange. If he got Sensata stock for free as part of a Bain payout, its value at the time of the transfer should have been included in his taxable income. Then it would have had a cost basis equal to that value. The charitable deduction would have been the same (since it depends on value, not basis), but his taxable income for the year when he got the stock (including if it was 2010) would have been higher. How credible is it that the stock was actually worth zero when he got it? Would have sold it to you or me for zero?
Similar question for the Domino's stock. If he acquired it via a tax-free reorganization, it would presumably have a carryover basis (i.e., the same basis it had in the hands of the prior owners). Was that zero? But suppose that Bain initially held the Domino's stock with a zero basis (or indeed with any other basis). If it transferred the stock to Romney as part of a compensatory payout, then the same analysis as that for the Sensata stock, based on value at the time of the transfer, would apply.
In sum, we have two tax planning details - pertaining to charitable gifts of appreciated property and to the rules for charitable foundations - that were clearly permissible tax planning, although they do shed light both on the state of the law and on Romney's willingness to use it to personal advantage (in ways that I freely admit I would do, too, in his position).
But the zero basis listed for the Sensata and Domino's stock strikes me as more mysterious, and as raising the questions of whether (a) he under-reported taxable income upon receiving the stock, and (b) he had a general practice of unduly low-balling the value of high-upside stock when this was tax-beneficial to him.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Double standard
Suppose that Romney was interviewing people for an important job. The person who got the job would get to exercise enormous independent discretion, and his or her character and values would therefore matter a lot.
Now suppose that a job applicant simply flat out refused to let Romney see highly relevant personal and business history information that would have shed considerable light on his or her character and values. Do you think that person would get the job?
UPDATE: As noted by a commenter on this blog entry, it would certainly be interesting to learn how many past years' tax returns Romeny requests from people he is considering for the vice presidential nomination.
Now suppose that a job applicant simply flat out refused to let Romney see highly relevant personal and business history information that would have shed considerable light on his or her character and values. Do you think that person would get the job?
UPDATE: As noted by a commenter on this blog entry, it would certainly be interesting to learn how many past years' tax returns Romeny requests from people he is considering for the vice presidential nomination.
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