Financial Times: Think-tank urges US to switch to 'territorial' tax system
By James Politi
US companies would repatriate as much as $1.6tn or the bulk of the cash they have stashed overseas if America overhauls the treatment of international earnings in a sweeping reform of the corporate tax code, a Republican-leaning think-tank said on Tuesday.
The American Action Forum led by Doug Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office during the George W Bush administration is trying to build the case for the US to switch to a territorial tax system that imposes minimal taxes on foreign earnings.
The US is an outlier among developed countries because it uses a worldwide system of tax that imposes levies on foreign earnings when they are brought back to the US of up to 35 per cent, the high statutory US corporate tax rate.
The AAF study based on a survey of tax officers at the largest multinationals suggests a switch to a territorial system could lead to the repatriation of between $1.1tn and $1.6tn a higher amount than previously thought. Over time, this could lead to the creation of 3.5m jobs and boost US gross domestic product by $440bn, the AAF study concluded using the CBO's methodology for calculating the economic impact of fiscal stimulus.
