The Hill: Texas Democrat Fires Back at Repatriation Study

It’s fair to say Rep. Lloyd Doggett (R-Texas) is not impressed with a new study touting a proposed corporate tax holiday.

The New Democratic Network (NDN), a left-leaning think tank, released a report Thursday stating that allowing multinationals to bring offshore profits to the United States at a low tax rate would add billions of dollars to the Treasury. The report also questioned assumptions — made in a Joint Committee on Taxation report — that the idea would be a revenue-loser over a decade.

But Doggett, who asked for the JCT report, is unconvinced, continuing to argue that a previous holiday from several years back did little to spark the economy.

“In fact, the JCT cost estimate of nearly $80 billion is likely too conservative and does not even address the full impact of a repeat of the 2004 corporate bonanza in lost jobs for hardworking Americans and windfalls for wealthy corporations and shareholders,” he said in a news release issued to The Hill.

“It is outrageous that large multinationals continue to push for their massive tax break that past experience demonstrates will not create jobs or help our economic recovery,” Doggett added.

In all, the NDN report states that a so-called “repatriation holiday” would cause a net gain of $8.7 billion over a decade.

Robert Shapiro, a top Commerce official under President Clinton and a co-author of the NDN study, also said in a news release that a holiday was a sound policy option, even if the best approach was a broader overhaul of the corporate tax code.

Repatriation supporters have also said they want corporate tax reform. But they say that process could take years, and a repatriation holiday could bridge the gap while policymakers work to revamp the tax code.

For his part, Thomas Barthold, the JCT’s chief of staff, said that his committee would take a look at the NDN study. “The economic modeling of repatriation proposals is difficult, and the Joint Committee staff is always open to learning and to improving analysis of proposed changes in tax law,” Barthold said.