For More Jobs, Fix The Corporate Tax Code (Demo)

Apple CEO Tim Cook testifies in Washington before a Senate panel examining how multinational corporations shift profits offshore. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images / May 21, 2013)

On July 3, 2013, Yuri Vanetik writes in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times:

The May jobs report shows that the American economy added 175,000 positions. Positive employment growth is welcome news, of course. But May’s gains weren’t big enough to make a dent in the national joblessness rate, which actually ticked up to 7.6%.

Yuri Vanetik doesn’t get it. His focus as with virtually EVERY other op-ed and article appearing in the national media is on JOB CREATION, rather than OWNERSHIP CREATION, which would be the REAL engine of economic growth and REAL opportunities for job creation. Not reducing the tax burden on corporations without the stipulation that in order to benefit from low corporate tax rates or ZERO tax corporations MUST demonstrate their use of financial mechanisms that empower their workers to acquire full voting, full dividend rights of individual ownership in FUTURE wealth-creating productive capital asset expansion.

The “American Dream” of 1776 enunciated in the founding papers of the Republic, underwrote minimal Government and maximal individual political and economic liberty, and drew inspiration from the widely held view that life, liberty, and property were an inseparable trinity.

That dream has largely been converted into a nightmare in modern America through the concentrated control effects of giant Government and monopoly capitalism, which may be handmaidens in tyranny. This situation has come about because of philosophical thinking that is inadequate to meet the needs of 21st century thinking, which has not kept pace with the fruits of science; and the situation is also due to a combination of conspiracy, greed, and archaic political philosophy.

What has and continues to escape the focus of conventional economists, and the politics of progressives, centralists and conservatives, is that the wealthy are rich because they own productive capital––non-human wealth-creating assets used to produce products and services. The reality is that in most economic tasks and in the overall economy, productive capital (not human labor) is independently doing evermore of the work that results in the products and services produced for consumption. It is productive capital’s increasing productiveness and evolution, rather than human effort (productivity conventionally considered) that is the productive means most responsible for economic growth. Effectively, technological innovation and invention limits new, higher-productivity jobs to relatively fewer workers, leaving most other people willing and able to work with lower-paying job opportunities or no jobs at all. This increasing majority is finding it more and more difficult to afford the products and services that are increasingly produced by productive capital.

When the right to participate in production through productive capital ownership is effectively denied, especially when tectonic shifts in the technologies of production destroy and degrade the worth of jobs, then the people affected become increasingly insecure in satisfying their and their family’s basic survival. Such conditions force them to seek low-pay, low-security jobs, or either charity or welfare, or desperately engage in illegitimate means. Such disintegration tears at society’s sense of fairness and justice, and spreads resentment, alienation and despair.

It is essential that people focus their thinking on the understanding of who and what creates wealth, in order to fully understand how to solve growing income inequality and the disintegration of the nation wherein the majority of citizens are regulated to low-pay job serfdom and public welfare.

In a modern, technological era it is the ownership of wealth-creating productive capital assets, not the labor of people that is the primary creator of affluence.

Hence, it is access to ownership of productive capital assets, not to jobs, wherein the national economic policy guidelines for the 21st century ought to lie. As ownership of wealth-creating productive capital becomes widely diffused, political power ought also to be widely diffused.

The fact is money power rules. When money power is broadly distributed in the hands of the citizens, not the politicians or bankers, the people shall rule.

As Senator Bernie Sanders points out, “At a time when corporate America and their allies in Congress are demanding lower tax rates, …many multi-national corporations are currently paying very little in taxes. In fact, some very profitable corporations like General Electric and Bank of America have, in some recent years, actually paid nothing in federal income taxes. As a result of absurd tax policy, large corporations and the wealthy are avoiding more than $100 billion in taxes each and every year by stashing their cash in the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens.”

Tax policies today encourage concentration of capital wealth and property, generating on one hand a huge governmental bureaucracy to regulate centralized economic activity, and on the other hand, an ever-expanding number of economically dependent people requiring another huge government bureaucracy to administer to their needs.

The economic, social, and legal injustices of our society are fostered by tax policies, which enable the rich to become richer, while the majority of the working people, the elderly, small businessmen, family farmers, and poor pay the taxes.

As a nation, we must adopt an economic policy designed to broaden private individual ownership of all forms of property––particularly property ownership rights which yield viable incomes to people. The function of Federal tax policy then should be to encourage broadened private, individual ownership, and discourage private concentrations of capital wealth and excessive personal incomes from property holdings.

To effectively broaden private, individual ownership of FUTURE wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital asset formation tax reform related to corporations and non-small business enterprises needs to be implemented as follows:

A. Investment credit tax incentives––The net result of new capital wealth formation is to create more productive land, industrial plant and equipment, machinery, tools, et cetera. In a highly technological economy the purpose of scientific advancement is not to create jobs (labor intensive production), but to substitute more efficient machines, buildings, tools, and productive land for labor––human work effort. This is the basis of increasing productiveness, and has been since the invention of the wheel to today’s age of cybernetics. Invention and innovation are supposed to save labor and free people for the enjoyment of the good life, the pursuant of happiness, and the improvement of their minds and bodies––to enable the fulfillment of the needs of the flesh (man’s material needs and well-being), so that the works of the soul may flow.

With an economic policy designed to foster widespread private equity ownership participation in the capital wealth assets of our economy, the use and purpose of the investment tax credit device as a special governmental subsidy to private corporations has a significant potential for encouraging broader ownership of income-producing productive property rights among all people.

If an investment tax credit is given to a business organization, it should be limited to finance real new capital wealth expansion for widespread private ownership participation by individuals and families.

The Federal Reserve should stop monetizing unproductive debt and begin creating an asset-backed currency that could enable every man, woman and child to establish a Capital Homestead Account or “CHA” (a super-IRA or asset tax-shelter for citizens) at their local bank to acquire a growing dividend-bearing stock portfolio to supplement their incomes from work and all other sources of income. The CHA would process an equal allocation of productive credit to every citizen exclusively for purchasing full-dividend payout shares in companies needing funds for growing the economy and private sector jobs for local, national and global markets. The shares would be purchased on credit wholly backed by projected “future savings” in the form of new productive capital assets as well as the future marketable products and services produced by the newly added technology, renewable energy systems, plant, rentable space and infrastructure added to the economy. Risk of default on each stock acquisition loan would be covered by private sector capital credit risk insurance and reinsurance, but would not require citizens to reduce their funds for consumption to purchase shares.

B. Nonpublic close corporations––All non-publicly registered and traded corporations, that is, those that are close corporations owned by a few people, and not classified under definitions set by the Small Business Administration, Department of Commerce, as a “small business,” or whose stock is not traded on the open markets and broadly owned, should be taxed as personal holding companies. The tax policy for close corporations, which by their nature concentrate wealth and limit free enterprise, should result in expanded ownership of capital wealth and discourage such organizations.

The income of such corporations should be treated as the personal incomes of their owners and taxed at personal income tax rates as herein recommended.

This tax policy will discourage private concentrations of capital wealth, and encourage viable small businesses and widespread private popular ownership shares in the small and large business corporations of America.

C. Public corporations––Tax policy of the Federal Government should encourage broad private ownership of public corporations, Publicly registered business corporations should be taxed on a basis, which encourages broad ownership and the fullest distribution of earnings to their owners.

The following tax policies for all publicly owned private corporations should be applied, based upon the philosophy that a corporation is a creature of the State, created by law, recognized as an “artificial person,” able to amass vast amounts of capital wealth with limited liability, and can have a life in perpetuity. Since a corporation is a legally created entity, and not a human being, its function, powers, responsibilities, and ownership are a matter of significant social, political, and economic policy.

Public corporations should be taxed as follows:

1. If profits are retained, that is, reinvested and not paid to the stockholder-owners, the corporation will pay a 90 percent tax on retained earnings.

2. Dividends paid out to stockholders-owners would be deductible from corporate earnings thus making these earnings subject to personal income tax rates.

3. All subsidiary corporations and partially or wholly owned enterprises of a parent or holding corporation will be taxed as a separate enterprise entity, as under the above recommended policy.

4. Business sole proprietorships and partnerships, and close corporations classified as small business

No change in existing tax procedure are necessary, except that the tax rate on such business incomes would be the same for individuals.

5. Capital gains tax––non-public corporations and close corporations

For individuals, capital gains realized on the sale of a personal residence, owned and occupied by a natural person or persons and/or a family would be taxed at the personal income tax rate.

All other capital gains in property interests (real or personal, securities et cetera) unless exchanged within 1 year for property of equivalent value, would be taxed at the personal income tax rate.

6. Capital property holdings tax: Limits on ownership

All individuals, whether their property is combined with others in joint tenancies, co-tenancies, or community property holdings of natural persons should be subject to a capital property holdings tax if the certified net worth or equity value of the property holding of the taxpayer exceeds $1 million.

7. Tax loopholes and subsidies

Eliminate all.

Along with these recommended tax policy reforms, the Bank for International Settlements should subscribe to the principle of providing interest-free capital credit and monetize capital formation transactions globally.

In the United States, we need to lift ownership-concentrating Federal Reserve System credit barriers and other institutional barriers that have historically separated owners from non-owners and link tax and monetary reforms to the goal of expanded capital ownership. This can be done under the existing legal powers of each of the 12 Federal Reserve regional banks, and will not add to the already unsustainable debt of the Federal Government or raise taxes on ordinary taxpayers. We need to free the system of dependency on Wall Street or the accumulated savings and money power of the rich and super-rich who control Wall Street. The Federal Reserve System has stifled the growth of America’s productive capacity through its monetary policy by monetizing public-sector growth and mounting Federal deficits and “Wall Street” bailouts; by favoring speculation over investment; by shortchanging the capital credit needs of entrepreneurs, inventors, farmers, and workers; by increasing the dependency of with usurious consumer credit; and by perpetuating unjust capital credit and ownership barriers between rich Americans and those without savings. The Federal Reserve Bank should be used to provide interest-free capital credit (including only transaction and risk premiums) and monetize each capital formation transaction, determined by the same expertise that determines it today––management and banks––that each transaction is viably feasible so that there is virtually no risk in the Federal Reserve. The first layer of risk should be taken by the commercial credit insurers, backed by a new government corporation, the Capital Diffusion Reinsurance Corporation, through which the loans could be guaranteed. This entity would fulfill the government’s responsibility for the health and prosperity of the American economy.

The Federal Reserve Board is already empowered under Section 13 of the Federal Reserve Act to reform monetary policy to discourage non-productive uses of credit, to encourage accelerated rates of private sector growth, and to promote widespread individual access to productive credit as a fundamental right of citizenship. The Federal Reserve Board needs to re-activate its discount mechanism to encourage private sector growth linked to expanded capital ownership opportunities for all Americans.

We need to reform the Federal Reserve Bank to create new owners of future productive capital investment in businesses simultaneously with the growth of the economy.

The solution to broadening private, individual ownership of America’s future capital wealth requires that the Federal Reserve stop monetizing unproductive debt, including bailouts of banks “too big to fail” and Wall Street derivatives speculators, and begin creating an asset-backed currency that could enable every man, woman and child to establish a Capital Homestead Account or “CHA” (a super-IRA or asset tax-shelter for citizens) at their local bank to acquire a growing dividend-bearing stock portfolio to supplement their incomes from work and all other sources of income. Policies need to insert American citizens into the low or no-interest investment money loop to enable non- and undercapitalized Americans, including the working class and poor, to build wealth and become “customers with money.” The proposed Capital Homestead Act would produce this result.

Sign the Petition at http://signon.org/sign/reform-the-federal-reserve.fb23?source=c.fb&r_by=3904687

Also see the article entitled “The Solution To America’s Economic Decline” athttp://www.nationofchange.org/solution-america-s-economic-decline-1367588690

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-vanetik-tax-reform-growth-20130703,0,6914610.story