Obama, Corporate Inversions, and Grotesque Hypocrisy

Daniel J. Mitchell 

Last month, I put together a list of six jaw-dropping examples of left-wing hypocrisy, one of which featured Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.
He made the list for having the chutzpah to criticize corporate inversions on the basis of supposed economic patriotism, even though he invested lots of money via the Cayman Islands when he was a crony capitalist at Citigroup.
But it turns out that Lew’s hypocrisy is just the tip of the iceberg.
It seems the entire Obama Administration was in favor of inversions just a couple of years ago. Check out these excerpts from a Bloomberg story.

President Barack Obama says U.S. corporations that adopt foreign addresses to avoid taxes are unpatriotic. His own administration helped one $20 billion American company do just that. As part of the bailout of the auto industry in 2009, Obama’s Treasury Department authorized spending $1.7 billion of government funds to get a bankrupt Michigan parts-maker back on its feet — as a British company. While executives continue to run Delphi Automotive Plc (DLPH) from a Detroit suburb, the paper headquarters in England potentially reduces the company’s U.S. tax bill by as much as $110 million a year. The Obama administration’s role in aiding Delphi’s escape from the U.S. tax system may complicate the president’s new campaign against corporate expatriation.

But that’s only part of the story.

…his administration continues to award more than $1 billion annually in government business to more than a dozen corporate expats.

And since we’re on the subject of hypocrisy, there’s another Bloomberg reportworth citing.

President Barack Obama has been bashing companies that pursue offshore mergers to reduce taxes. He hasn’t talked about the people behind the deals — some of whom are his biggest donors. Executives, advisers and directors involved in some of the tax-cutting transactions include Blair Effron, an investment banker who hosted Obama for a May fundraiser at his two-level, 9,000-square-foot apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Others are Jim Rogers, co-chairman of the host committee for the 2012 Democratic National Convention; Roger Altman, a former senior Treasury Department official who raised at least $200,000 for Obama’s re-election campaign; and Shantanu Narayen, who sits on the president’s management advisory board. The administration’s connections to more than 20 donors associated with the transactions are causing tensions for the president.

Gee, I’m just heartbroken when politicians have tensions.
But I’m a policy wonk rather than a political pundit, so let’s now remind ourselves why inversions are taking place so that the real solution becomes apparent.
The Wall Street Journal opines, explaining that companies are being driven to invert by the combination of worldwide taxation and a punitive tax rate.

…the U.S. has the highest corporate income tax rate in the developed world, and that’s an incentive for all companies, wherever they are based, to invest outside the U.S. But the current appetite for inversions—in which a U.S. firm buys a foreign company and adopts its legal address while keeping operational headquarters in the U.S.—results from the combination of this punitive rate with a separate problem created by Washington. The U.S. is one of only six OECD countries that imposes on its businesses the world-wide taxation of corporate profits. Every company pays taxes to the country in which profits are earned. But U.S. companies have the extra burden of also paying the IRS whenever those profits come back from the foreign country into the U.S. The tax bill is the difference between whatever the companies paid overseas and the 35% U.S. rate. The perverse result is that a foreign company can choose to invest in the U.S. without penalty, but U.S.-based Medtronic would pay hundreds of millions and perhaps billions in additional taxes if it wanted to bring overseas profits back to its home country. …Keep in mind that the money invested in corporations was once earned by someone who paid taxes on it. And it will be taxed again as dividends or capital gains.

Amen. And kudos to the WSJ for pointing out there the internal revenue code imposes multiple layers of taxation on income that is saved and invested.
That’s very bad news for workers since it means less capital formation.
Let’s close with this great cartoon from Michael Ramirez…

…and also a couple of videos on international taxation.
First we have this video on “deferral,” which is very relevant since it explains why worldwide taxation is so destructive.

And we also have this video about Obama’s anti-tax haven demagoguery.

I particularly like the reference to Ugland House since that’s where Obama’s Treasury Secretary parked money.
But it’s all okay, at least if you’re part of the political class. Just repeat over and over again that rules are for the peasants in the private sector, not the elite in Washington and their crony donors.