Corporate Plea on Tax Breaks: Ours Come First

[radfringe]

Corporate Plea on Tax Breaks: Ours Come First
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: October 30, 2003

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 — It has been promoted as a bill to create jobs, to enhance American competitiveness and to level the playing field for companies overseas.

But as House lawmakers pushed ahead this week with the biggest overhaul of corporate taxes in two decades, they found themselves briefly fixated on bows and arrows.

"U.S. manufacturers of bows and arrows are fleeing in droves for Korea and China," said Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin. The problem, he told members of the House Ways and Means Committee, is that American arrows are hit with a 12.4 percent excise tax, but imported arrows are not.

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These and other special-interest nuggets were little more than pocket change in a bill that would offer corporations $128 billion in new tax relief over the next decade.

But they are indicative of the trade-offs that have been necessary to win support for what began as a fairly modest goal last year: to repeal a long-standing tax subsidy for exporters, worth about $55 billion, which has been declared illegal under international law, and replace it with new tax breaks of comparable value.

The bill that passed the House tax-writing committee would fulfill that goal, to the satisfaction of manufacturing companies, oil and gas refineries, farmers, movie studios and engineering conglomerates like the Bechtel Corporation and Halliburton.

[Voltaire99]

1. Bows and Arrows: Weapons of Tax Destruction

How much does the bow & arrow lobby spend getting personal service like this?