When Congress resumes doing nothing constitutional tasks – may we expect an end to rubber stamping corporate tax breaks?
UK-based Diageo, the world’s biggest liquor company that sells Captain Morgan’s rum, is enjoying a $2.7 billion subsidy from the U.S. Virgin Islands, aided in part by a tax break rubber-stamped by Congress annually with little public debate.
Recipients of more than $30 billion of tax breaks like these hope to catch a ride on the payroll tax legislation expiring next month, with special interests – from Diageo to Nascar racetrack owners to major U.S. banks – lobbying to win renewals of their preferences in the sprawling U.S. tax code.
Popular items…like a shorter write-off period for motorsports complexes that primarily benefits owners of Nascar tracks, are in the mix.
“…Once you get into that caboose, you catch a ride every year,” said Steve Ellis, a vice president at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan federal spending watchdog group…
The last time lawmakers revamped the tax code was 1986. That took years to do and came only after President Ronald Reagan made it a priority and was safely ensconced in a second term…
Obama and lawmakers fought through the end of 2011 over renewing the payroll tax cut for workers, settling on a two-month fix. Businesses see a potential to attach breaks onto any deal that may emerge from the need to address the expiration of those tax cuts at the end of February.
“People are looking at the payroll tax legislation as a potential vehicle and kind of licking their chops,” said Marc Gerson, a former tax attorney for House Republicans, now representing business interests at Miller & Chevalier…
One big tax break that is on a yearly lease helps financial institutions defer taxes on some income, such as royalties from a patent, earned abroad. Critics say the provisions helps big banks and other firms dodge taxes. That provision costs the government about $4 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Even if I feel it likely that Obama will be re-elected given the crap clump of candidates the Republicans offer, experience has taught us that he and the Dems can’t be trusted anymore than Republicans to actually produce significant change. Standard liberal packages and the odd touch of civil rights are no less than what we are owed for putting them into power in the first place.
The need for serious reform of archaic Congressional rules which clog potential progress, tax reform, an end to lobbying rules still filling Congress with the stink of the Gingrich counter-revolution – and a law, thank you, limiting election expenses and the power of corporate donors over ordinary folks – all need to be enacted in the next Congress or two. Ain’t nothing like starting to put on the heat, now.
