Love Is Hate, War Is Peace, General Tax Cuts Are Corporate Welfare

It seems the St. Louis Post-Dispatch thinks business tax cuts amount to corporate welfare. That is NOT corporate welfare. Corporate welfare is the government giving subsidies, grants, loopholes, and other forms of preferential treatment to specific businesses. The Export-Import Bank is an example of corporate welfare.  At the state level, various instances of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) count as corporate welfare. However, letting a person or business keep more of what he/she/it earns is not corporate welfare.

That is not how the Post-Dispatch sees it. They believe that all money is the government’s money and that we should be grateful for the few cents they leave us.

The substance of the Post-Dispatch’s argument against business tax cuts? They claim there is little evidence to support the assertion that cutting business taxes will result in increased economic activity. Except this study by Jens Arnold found that corporate income taxes were one of the most economically harmful taxes a country can impose. And this study by the Tax Foundation analyzed the economic literature and found that corporate income taxes are the most harmful to growth.

Even one of the articles they cite to support their position states, in regards to start-ups creating jobs, “their decision to create a new job would be based on whether the long-term cost of that new job would be offset by higher revenues and profits.” Well . . . if a company has more money after taxes (because their taxes go down), what will happen to their profits? They will increase.

Tax cuts aren’t everything, and even if House Bill 253 becomes law, it alone will not cause our state’s economy to go gangbusters. However, tax rates DO matter, and no amount of screeching from the Post-Dispatch will change that.