Corporate Tax Rate Cut A Top Priority: Hatch

Senator Orrin Hatch (R – Utah) has said that lowering the United States’ corporate tax rate to one of the lowest in the world should be a top priority in current tax reform efforts.

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance said that the US corporate rate, one of the highest in the world, was not just a burden on companies and shareholders, but “is disproportionately borne by the factory workers, the scientists, and even the janitors who work for corporations, large and small.”

Hatch argued that a reduced corporate tax rate would allow US companies to compete more successfully, result in fewer businesses moving offshore, incentivize more businesses to set up in the US, and encourage established US companies to invest their capital in the US. He also said that the primary driver behind practices such as inversions, earning-stripping, and profit shifting were due to “the desire to avoid – or at the very least mitigate – the impact of the US corporate rate.”

“When I talk to board members and CEOs of some of the largest companies in our country, they tend to be unequivocal when why they feel pressure to invert,” Hatch said. “Almost uniformly, their answer is our outrageously high corporate tax rate.”