In 2009, the Minnesota Governor’s 21st Century Tax Reform Commission appointed by Governor Tim Pawlenty released its report. Redesigns of the Minnesota Department of Revenue website keep changing the link to access this report. I am posting the report of the Minnesota Governor’s 21st Century Tax Reform Commission and a brief summary of its recommendations on this blog so that it may be more easily accessed and read.
WCCO asked me one of their Good Questions: How Much Do We Pay In Taxes?
I testified to the Minnesota House Tax Committee about how to improve the Minnesota Tax Incidence Study by including the Federal Taxes paid by Minnesotans in the Minnesota Tax Incidence Study. Rep. Greg Davids introduced legislation to provide this information to Minnesotans.
By John A. Spry
St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN) – June 20, 2014
Medtronic’s announcement that it will move its official headquarters to Ireland provides a lesson in how America’s broken tax code hurts Minnesota workers by denying them good jobs purely for tax reasons.
Medtronic has promised to invest over $10 billion in the United States and create at least 1,000 new jobs in Minnesota after it merges with Dublin-based Covidien. Medtronic will be able to re-invest money earned outside the U.S. here without additional tax payments only if the newly merged firm is domiciled in Ireland instead of the U.S.
These investments could have already been made here and we could already have these jobs in Minnesota if our tax code wasn’t written to punish investments in America.
If Medtronic had used earnings from abroad to finance new job-creating investments in the United States, the U.S. corporate income tax on these repatriated earnings would have made these investments cost-prohibitive.
The irony, already noted by many observers, is that Medtronic had to engineer the Covidien deal in order to move its official headquarters to Ireland. The combined Irish medical-device firm will be able to make new job-creating American investments with cash earned around the world. These are job-producing investments that Medtronic has been so far unable to make as an American firm because of our broken tax code.
However, it would be unlikely that we would we see the promised new investment and more than 1,000 promised new jobs here if Congress passes legislation sponsored by U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken of Minnesota. If their bill to limit merged companies from locating their headquarters abroad passes, it would trigger language in the deal that could cancel the merger.
American businesses face a system of worldwide taxation, while most of the industrialized world uses territorial taxation.
Our corporations have to first pay corporate income tax in foreign countries where they operate. For example, an American firm has to pay the 22 percent Swedish corporate income tax on its Swedish income. Then when the American firm repatriates, or brings this money back home, it has to pay the 35 percent federal income tax rate and state corporate income taxes, while receiving credit for tax payments abroad. So an American firm faces an additional 13 percent repatriation tax.
In contrast, a Canadian firm operating in Sweden only pays the 22 percent Swedish tax rate on its Swedish income. It can then deploy its capital anywhere without any additional tax payments.
A worldwide system of taxation has several drawbacks.
First, it can result in a large pool of funds that are locked outside of the country to avoid repatriation taxes.
Secondly, it creates a significant competitive disadvantage for our firms operating in a system of worldwide taxation. They face a higher total tax rate than their competitors that only have to pay corporate income tax once in the country where they earned the income.
Finally, the complex system of worldwide taxation and credits for foreign tax payments increases accounting and tax-planning costs. Over $40 billion a year is wasted filing and auditing corporate tax forms. Our tax code wastes resources that could go toward productive, job-creating investments.
Our 41.4 percent combined-federal-plus-Minnesota statutory corporate income tax rate is 66 percent higher than the average rate in other industrialized nations. President Obama’s Job Council has noted that our uncompetitive corporate income tax hurts American workers through “reduced employment opportunities and lower wages.”
The Medtronic deal shows that companies do consider taxes when they make major investment decisions. Indeed, the President’s Job Council has observed, “In a global economy in which capital can move easily across borders, differences in corporate tax rates have a growing influence on where multinational companies decide to invest.”
Both Ireland and the United States collected 2.6 percent of their GDP in corporate income taxes in 2012. But Ireland used a 12.5 percent tax rate on a relatively larger tax base to collect the same share of their economy in corporate taxes as the U.S. collected with our much higher 35 percent federal tax rate.
Economists have suggested a variety of ways to move the U.S. toward the successful Irish corporate-tax model that seeks to raise revenue from a broad tax base at a lower tax rate. Yet proposals for corporate tax reform and a simpler, broader tax code with lower tax rates are going nowhere in Washington.
Why do we seem to be stuck with a broken tax code that wastes resources on costly paperwork and discourages investment in America?
I believe economists have failed to effectively explain that only people feel the burden of taxes, not corporations. After all, a corporation is simply a tool that connects people such as investors, workers, and customers through contracts.
A corporation can be made to collect taxes from its workers, customers, and investors. But the corporation itself never feels the burden of taxation.
Too many politicians and journalists talk about businesses paying taxes as if businesses were real, live breathing people that feel the pain of paying taxes. For example, Gov. Mark Dayton talks about making businesses pay their fair share. He erroneously claims that he hasn’t raised income taxes on low-income and middle-class Minnesotans. But both Gov. Dayton and the Statehouse press corps have ignored the Minnesota Department of Revenue analysis that concluded that the 2013 Minnesota corporate income tax hikes were regressive and lowered wages for Minnesota workers, raised prices for Minnesota consumers, and lowered returns to investors in Minnesota.
It may be impossible to pass pro-growth tax reform while politicians and journalists create the erroneous perception that taxes collected by corporations are not paid by real flesh-and-blood people. Proposals to lower tax rates on job-creating investments are too often attacked as favoring corporations instead of people.
Hopefully, the Medtronic news will spur politicians, journalists, and citizens to scrutinize our broken corporate tax code without ignoring the reality that corporate taxes are taxes on you and me.
John Spry of St. Paul is an associate professor in the Department of Finance at the University of St. Thomas. He’s on Twitter at @JohnASpry.
I testified about “The Economics of Taxation and Dynamic Scoring” to the Minnesota Senate Tax Committee on March 3, 2011.
Here are my PowerPoint slides for the hearing: Economics of Taxation and Dynamic Scoring
The video of the hearing:
Donald Trump recently proposed a 45 percent tax on American shoppers buying imported goods from China.
Trump told the New York Times, “I would tax China coming in — products coming in. I would do a tariff. And they do it to us. We have to be smart. I’m a free trader. I’m a free trader. And some of the people would say, ‘Oh, it’s terrible.’ I’m a free trader. I love free trade. But it’s got to be reasonably fair. I would do a tax, and the tax — let me tell you what the tax should be. The tax should be 45 percent.”
Higher tariffs on American buyers have always been a big mistake.
In 1930 the Republican controlled Congress passed the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that raised taxes on American imports. This unwise policy raised the cost of living for all Americans. These new taxes made it harder for people to shop for their families.
GOP Congressman Willis Hawley claimed that his tariff would cause “a renewed era of prosperity.” Instead his legislation made an already bad depression worse.
The historical record agrees with Ben Stein’s assessment of Smoot-Hawley tariff in the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”: “It did not work and the United States sank deeper into the Depression.”
Our higher tariffs led to retaliatory taxes on American exports to other countries. The resulting trade barriers reduced sales and employment in exporting industries in the United States. Farmers and auto workers suffered as trade barriers reduced American exports of their products. World trade fell 63 percent from 1930 to 1933. International trade promotes cooperation and peace between nations. This tariff war fueled bitterness in international relations.
Our standard of living fell because of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff and a boatload of other bad policies in the 1930s.
Donald Trump’s claim that his new 45 percent tariff is smart is as wrong as Rep. Hawley’s boast that his tariff bill would lead to prosperity. Don’t trust promises that we can tax ourselves into prosperity.
Our economy prospered as trade barriers were lowered after World War II.
The value of U.S. manufacturing set a new record of over $2.1 trillion in output last year. Economist Mark Perry notes that U.S. manufacturing is about the same size as the combined manufacturing output of Germany, the United Kingdom, France, South Korea, Brazil, and Russia.
We have become more prosperous because of both increased international trade and technological progress. In 1947 Americans paid 42 percent of their after-tax disposable income for food, cars, clothing, and household furnishings including appliances. Now we only pay 15 percent of our after-tax disposable income for these purchases. Lower prices for clothing and household furnishings have freed up money in the family budget. Trump’s tariff proposal would work against this positive economic trend for American families by raising prices.
Trump’s 45 percent tax will raise the prices of many goods designed in the United States and assembled in China. Trump’s proposal would make Apple products unaffordable for many Americans. This tax will steer consumers toward buying Samsung products from South Korea instead of Apple. This government interference in the private sector economy is not good for workers at Apple and other companies that are part of global supply chains.
American exporters would justly fear retaliatory trade barriers from China on their exports. Trump’s proposal is likely to trigger a trade war that would be especially harmful to Minnesota grain and hog farmers wanting to sell to China. Trump doesn’t talk about the economic damage that would result from his policy proposals.
Trump is hoping that voters believe that his tariff will not hurt them. But Trump supporter Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) told MSNBC that Trump’s tariff would raise inflation and that this higher inflation would be good for the American economy. Congressman Collins supports squeezing family budgets by raising the prices of consumer goods through this new tax.
Trump’s 45 percent tariff proposal is a loser. If we don’t want people to suffer its harm we have to speak out against it now.
As Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
John A. Spry is an associate professor in the Department of Finance at the University of St. Thomas. Find him online at @JohnASpry.
Dear Chairman Davids and Members of the House Tax Committee:
I have some concerns about H.F. 848 because it has the potential to become a better bill that would further expand economic prosperity, simplify the tax code, and move Minnesota in the positive direction of treating equally situated taxpayers equally. The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of the State of Minnesota or the University of St. Thomas. My testimony and all errors are my own.
Here are 35 ways that you can improve H.D. 848 and turn it into one of the “greatest hits” of Minnesota tax policy:
I would be happy to work around my teaching schedule to help the committee draft amendments to broaden the tax base and lower tax rates for all Minnesota taxpayers.
CNN cited me in their story, “The lottery game that’s bigger than Powerball” by Chris Isidore on February 11, 2015 about the economics of state lotteries.
The odds of winning an instant game are actually better than they are for Powerball and MegaMillions. Scratch-off games typically pay out about 70% of the money spent on tickets. Only about half the money spent on Powerball is distributed to winners.
By comparison, a casino slot machine pays out between 90% and 99% of the amount wagered, according to John Spry, a finance professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, who studies lotteries
The odds aren’t the only difference between these games — the people who play instant games are typically poorer.
According to a study by Spry, about three out of four instant game tickets are purchased by people with below-average incomes. Wealthier players tend to enter the big multi-million drawings.
It would be better to say that people that cumulatively have the bottom 50% of income purchase 75% of instant game tickets. Instant, scratch games are more regressive than jackpot games like Powerball or Mega-Millions.
The following figure from my paper 2005 paper “The Relative Regressivity of Seven Minnesota Lottery Games.” (with Kathryn L. Combs and J.B. Kim) in the Proceedings of the National Tax Association Proceedings graphs the cumulative distribution of per capita income versus the cumulative distribution of lottery sales by zip code for seven Minnesota Lottery games. Lottery sales are a large share of income for lower income zip codes than for higher income zip codes.
You can read the entire story here: http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/09/pf/powerball-jackpot-odds/index.html?iid=EL
Minnesota’s unemployment rate is generally below the national average. However, Minnesota unemployment rate often moves closer to the national average leading into a recession as shown in this graph of Minnesota and U.S. employment from 1976 to 2014.
