September, 15 2021, 10:02am EDT
Main Street Alliance Releases Tax Fairness Recommendations that would Support Small Businesses as Committees Debate how to Raise Revenue for Build Back Better
WASHINGTON
Main Street Alliance today released recommendations for tax reform that would support small businesses and their communities. These recommendations come as the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees are building out their tax plans as part of the investments needed in the Build Back Better package.
The draft plan proposed by the House Ways and Means Committee this week is a major step forward in requiring large corporations to pay their fair share, and a critical means of funding the job-creating investments of the Build Back Better plan. Many of the recommendations are included in this plan. However, there is much farther to go to achieve a truly fair tax system for small businesses than large corporations.
"When a limited set of big corporations and wealthy individuals hoard money and resources, as encouraged by our skewed tax system, small businesses lose," said Co-Executive Director of Main Street Alliance Stephen Michael (join Stephen for a press call to discuss these recommendations today). "Conversely, improved public sector services like those outlined in the Build Back Better plan and greater customer purchasing power are all investments that can be better funded if the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share. It's a win-win-win for small businesses, working families, and their communities."
The cost of doing nothing is too high. We must seize the opportunity to invest in the economic engine of our country -- small businesses -- and unrig the tax code to make sure a robust recovery has the foundation for the long term.
Small Business Owner Quotes from the Briefing:
"COVID-19 has driven home how essential it is to fund our communities and provide relief to the Black-owned businesses, the Latino-owned businesses, and the mom-and-pops hit hardest by the pandemic. Now, with all of us already pitching in -- small business owners, their employees, people of all races and walks of life -- it's now time for big corporations to pitch in as well."
Natasha McKeller Crosby, Natasha Crosby Realty, Richmond, VA"If we keep pretending that tax breaks are a substitute for true demand, my customers will have less flexibility with their spending, which will lower demand for our services. Tax breaks do not create jobs. Demand creates jobs."
Ian Levitt, Studio Americana, Minneapolis, MN"I've run a logistics company, a retail shop, and have turned a single popcorn store into a franchise in five states. I've learned a lot as a business owner over the years, but across industries, there's one thing in common: strong consumer demand drives my business decisions and my business growth."
ReShonda Young, Bank of Jabez, Popcorn Heaven (Founder) Waterloo, IA"I don't mind paying taxes. I don't mind paying my fair share of taxes because I know where it goes. Local schools. Local hospitals. First responders. And more. All critical components to building healthy and strong communities. But if we want to build healthy, strong, and economically thriving communities, well, we've got to address the current taxation system."
Sara McDowell, The Media Squirrel, Charleston, WV
Tax Recommendations Highlights:
Across the country, small business owners of all ethnic backgrounds and in all economic sectors are harmed by rising economic inequality and the unchecked growth in size and power of large corporations. The vast majority of small business owners want a fair federal tax system that sustains Main Street businesses and requires large corporations and the wealthy to make shared contributions to critical public investments.
As lawmakers in Washington, D.C., discuss a series of historic infrastructure investments to support our economy and promote racial equity, they also have an opportunity to take critical steps toward fixing federal tax rules. Main Street Alliance recommends that lawmakers:
Set the corporate tax rate at 28 percent, returning corporate tax revenue to around its 21st Century average before the 2017 tax law.
Return the top tax rate on the richest one percent of Americans to 39.6 percent, where it was before the 2017 tax bill.
Ensure that corporations pay their taxes by improving bank reporting requirements and investing $80 billion over the next decade in the IRS' enforcement capacity and technology modernization efforts to support audits of large corporations and very wealthy individuals.
Equalize tax rates between the ultra-rich and the rest of Americans by protecting family businesses and ending preferences for capital gains income, giveaways for rich heirs, and other loopholes for the very top.
Discourage offshoring by raising the offshore tax rate for U.S. multinational corporations to an effective 21 percent and eliminating loopholes that incentivize and ultimately reward multinational corporations for shifting profits and jobs overseas.
In addition to these priority measures, Main Street Alliance also recommends the following improvements to our federal tax system:
Prevent U.S. corporations from claiming overseas tax havens as their residence, using foreign mergers and acquisitions to avoid taxes while maintaining management and operations in the U.S.
Replace incentives for offshoring jobs and assets with incentives for onshoring jobs and research and development.
Require large, highly profitable corporations to pay a 15 percent minimum tax on the income they use to report their profits to investors ("book income").
Eliminate tax preferences for fossil fuels and make polluting industries pay for cleaning up the harm they cause our communities.
Close the carried interest loophole to ensure hedge fund partners pay ordinary income rates on their income.
The Main Street Alliance (MSA) is a national network of small business coalitions working to build a new voice for small businesses on important public policy issues. Main Street Alliance members are working throughout the country to build policies that work for business owners, their employees, and the communities they serve.
LATEST NEWS
UN Chief Warns of Israel's Syria Invasion and Land Seizures
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the "urgent need" for Israel to "de-escalate violence on all fronts."
Dec 12, 2024
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.
Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
While Israel argues that its invasion of Syria does not violate a 1974 armistice agreement between the two countries because the Assad dynasty no longer rules the neighboring nation, Dujarric said Guterres maintains that Israel must uphold its obligations under the deal, "including by ending all unauthorized presence in the area of separation and refraining from any action that would undermine the cease-fire and stability in Golan."
Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has illegally occupied it ever since, annexing the seized lands in 1981.
Other countries including France, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have criticized Israel's invasion, while the United States defended the move.
"The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area... which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing earlier this week. "Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions... We support all sides upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Sanders Says 'Political Movement,' Not Murder, Is the Path to Medicare for All
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," he said. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together."
Dec 12, 2024
Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
"Look, when we talk about the healthcare crisis, in my view, and I think the view of a majority of Americans, the current system is broken, it is dysfunctional, it is cruel, and it is wildly inefficient—far too expensive," said Sanders (I-Vt.), whose position is backed up by various polls.
"The reason we have not joined virtually every other major country on Earth in guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right is the political power and financial power of the insurance industry and drug companies," he told Jacobin. "It will take a political revolution in this country to get Congress to say, 'You know what, we're here to represent ordinary people, to provide quality care to ordinary people as a human right,' and not to worry about the profits of insurance and drug companies."
Asked about Thompson's alleged killer—26-year-old Luigi Mangione, whose reported manifesto railed against the nation's expensive healthcare system and low life expectancy—Sanders said: "You don't kill people. It's abhorrent. I condemn it wholeheartedly. It was a terrible act. But what it did show online is that many, many people are furious at the health insurance companies who make huge profits denying them and their families the healthcare that they desperately need."
"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system."
"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system," he continued, noting the tens of thousands of Americans who die each year because they can't get to a doctor.
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," Sanders added. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together and understanding that it is the right of every American to be able to walk into a doctor's office when they need to and not have to take out their wallet."
"The way we're going to bring about the kind of fundamental changes we need in healthcare is, in fact, by a political movement which understands the government has got to represent all of us, not just the 1%," the senator told Jacobin.
The 83-year-old Vermonter, who was just reelected to what he says is likely his last six-year term, is an Independent but caucuses with Democrats and sought their presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. He has urged the Democratic Party to recognize why some working-class voters have abandoned it since Republicans won the White House and both chambers of Congress last month. A refusal to take on insurance and drug companies and overhaul the healthcare system, he argues, is one reason.
Sanders—one of the few members of Congress who regularly talks about Medicare for All—isn't alone in suggesting that unsympathetic responses to Thompson's murder can be explained by a privatized healthcare system that fails so many people.
In addition to highlighting Sanders' interview on social media, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out to Business Insider on Wednesday that "you've got thousands of people that are sharing their stories of frustration" in the wake of Thompson's death.
Khanna—a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, led in the House of Representatives by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—made the case that you can recognize those stories without accepting the assassination.
"You condemn the murder of an insurance executive who was a father of two kids," he said. "At the same time, you say there's obviously an outpouring behavior of people whose claims are being denied, and we need to reform the system."
Two other Medicare for All advocates, Reps. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), also made clear to Business Insider that they oppose Thompson's murder but understand some of the responses to it.
"Of course, we don't want to see the chaos that vigilantism presents," said Ocasio-Cortez. "We also don't want to see the extreme suffering that millions of Americans confront when your life changes overnight from a horrific diagnosis, and people are led to just some of the worst, not just health events, but the worst financial events of their and their family's lives."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
"Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far," she continued. "This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the healthcare to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone."
After facing some criticism for those comments, Warren added Wednesday: "Violence is never the answer. Period... I should have been much clearer that there is never a justification for murder."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Reports Target Israeli Army for 'Unprecedented Massacre' of Gaza Journalists
"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of Reporters Without Borders.
Dec 12, 2024
Reports released this week from two organizations that advocate for journalists underscore just how deadly Gaza has become for media workers.
Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
The organization has also filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court "for war crimes committed by the Israeli army against journalists," according to the roundup, which includes stats from January 1 through December 1.
"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of RSF, in the introduction to the report. Since October 2023, 145 journalists have been killed in Gaza, "including at least 35 who were very likely targeted or killed while working."
Bruttin added that "many of these reporters were clearly identifiable as journalists and protected by this status, yet they were shot or killed in Israeli strikes that blatantly disregarded international law. This was compounded by a deliberate media blackout and a block on foreign journalists entering the strip."
When counting the number of journalists killed by the Israeli army since October 2023 in both Gaza and Lebanon, the tally comes to 155—"an unprecedented massacre," according to the roundup.
Multiple journalists were also killed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Sudan, Myanmar, Colombia, and Ukraine, according to the report, and hundreds more were detained and are now behind bars in countries including Israel, China, and Russia.
Meanwhile, in a statement released Thursday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) announced that at least 139 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began in 2023, and in a statement released Wednesday, IFJ announced that 104 journalists had perished worldwide this year (which includes deaths from January 1 through December 10). IFJ's number for all of 2024 appears to be higher than RSF because RSF is only counting deaths that occurred "on the job or in connection with their work."
IFJ lists out each of the slain journalists in its 139 count, which includes the journalist Hamza Al-Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, Wael Al-Dahdouh, who was killed with journalist Mustafa Thuraya when Israeli forces targeted their car while they were in northern Rafah in January 2024.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular