The Obama administration has dismissed questions about the Benghazi debacle as a purely political “sideshow.” A new The Heritage Foundation’s video, below, exposes the administration’s repeated dissembling on the terrorist attack that left four Americans dead.
Demand the truth. The American people deserve answers.
Apple executives were called in to testify before members of Congress yesterday. They were accused of “shifting” profits abroad to avoid paying taxes.
The fact of the matter, though, as Heritage Foundation tax expert Curtis Dubay told Fox Business yesterday, is that the money hasn’t been shifted at all because it wasn’t earned in the U.S. “I can’t go down to the Apple store here in Washington, buy an iPad, and have Apple then ‘shift’ that income abroad,” he said.
The U.S. corporate tax rate is the highest rate in the world. As long as it remains so exorbitant, successful businesses like Apple are going to keep their foreign income abroad.
Heritage’s Amy Payne has more:
The reason the Senate feigned indignation over an issue that had nothing to do with the U.S. is that some Members want Apple to pay more U.S. tax on all that foreign cash. They want Apple to bring all of that profit back into the U.S. and pay the U.S. corporate tax rate—the world’s highest—on it. But as long as we keep the U.S. rate the highest in the world, Apple and other multinational businesses are going to keep their foreign income abroad.
Apple has not done anything illegal by minimizing its tax liability. Because of America’s extremely high corporate tax rate, many companies don’t return to the U.S. what money they earn abroad. While other countries have been making efforts to cut their corporate tax rates, the U.S. has been making it more and more difficult for U.S. businesses.
Do you think Apple should pay more in taxes? Or should we fix the tax code to stop punishing successful firms?
He didn't know? Photo: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
President Obama says he didn’t know about the multiple scandals involving his administration, including the IRS harassment of conservative groups. But as the chief executive, shouldn’t President Obama be held responsible for these scandals?
If this were the business world, the answer would be “yes,” The Heritage Foundation’s Daniel Dew explains: Continue Reading »
“On May 19, the United States hit its debt ceiling after adding $300 billion in more debt since lawmakers suspended the ceiling in February,” Heritage’s Romina Boccia reports.
That’s $300 billion in new debt in less than four months.
Hitting the limit, she says, is part of an ongoing pattern: Continue Reading »
The IRS scandals are especially troubling since that’s the agency that’s in charge of administering much of Obamacare. “The scandals coming to light over the last week perfectly make the case for why Congress must eradicate the law from the statute books,” Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint argues.
Get more graphics like this by liking Heritage on Facebook.
Congress is currently debating the so-called “farm bill,” which Heritage Foundation experts Daren Bakst and Diane Katz call “a multi-billion-dollar tangle of agriculture subsidies, welfare payments, and environmental patronage.”
In fact, this legislation is really a food-stamp bill with farm programs tacked on. As Bakst and Rachel Sheffield explain, this approach allows urban and rural lawmakers to join forces to spend taxpayer money. Continue Reading »
Pat Benic/UPI/Newscom
It’s no secret American leadership in the world is growing weaker. Our decreasing influence can be traced to the Obama Doctrine.
With his goal to make the United States “an equal partner” rather than an “exceptional” nation, President Obama has sought to remake American foreign policy. For years, The Heritage Foundation has explored and tracked the Obama Doctrine. Heritage’s Helle Dale explains the four main tenets identified by authors Kim Holmes and James Carafano. They are:
Becoming weaker in the world’s eye is not advantageous for the U.S.. Dale explains:
Soft power has not advanced the cause of political reform or peace in the Middle East following the Arab uprisings. And regimes like those of Syria, North Korea, and Iran display little fear of consequences from a U.S. in global retreat.
While the Obama Doctrine has made America weaker abroad, he has pushed for a stronger and more intrusive government at home. Recent scandals aside (IRS, AP spying, Benghazi), Obamacare is a prime example of a power-grab. As Heritage president Jim DeMint wrote in yesterday’s Morning Bell, Obamacare is a means by which President Obama can jockey for more power through the IRS: “ Obamacare grants it (IRS) massive new authority.”
Do you think President Obama needs to reevaluate his policy priorities?
On Friday the IRS admitted to targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny in their applications for tax-exempt status. The agency claimed the practice was initiated by low-level workers and did not result from political bias.
Then over the weekend, it was revealed that the IRS targeted “groups focused on government spending, government debt, taxes, and education on ways to ‘make America a better place to live.’”
Heritage Foundation expert Hans von Spakovsky says that any explanation other than political bias would be hard to believe, because “the only relevant or substantive thing these organizations have in common is that they are all conservative politically.”
In fact, it’s fully permissible for organizations to advance conservative principles, he explains in a separate post:
Whether or not you agree with the Administration’s policies or whether you criticize the expansion of government or its excessive debt are not a consideration under the Revenue Code to qualify for tax-exempt status. Apparently, the IRS finally realized that, because according to The Washington Post, it changed its tactics in May 2012 to focus on “organizations with indicators of significant amounts of political campaign intervention.” Despite that change, dozens of conservative organizations are still waiting to receive their tax exemptions.
So why did the practice go on for so long without interference from the higher-ups? There should be a thorough investigation, von Spakovsky argues:
It’s unclear who in the IRS or elsewhere supported or condoned the wrongful conduct at issue, but it is important for the rule of law and the interests of justice that Congress aggressively pursue its oversight function to get to the bottom of this scandal and, most importantly, who instigated and authorized it.
Do you think targeting conservative groups was political?
Heritage President Jim DeMint’s expansion of The Heritage Foundation’s “‘can do’ approach offers conservatives the hope that empirical evidence and good ideas can actually win the day, so right reason can find its way into law,” columnist Quin Hillyer writes in the American Spectator.
Hilyer chatted briefly with DeMint about Heritage’s future:
“We’re not going to change the scholarly approach to research and development of policies,” he said. “That’s not going to change. But Heritage can become more of an emissary, so to speak, of those policies. We will be doing more to energize the grass roots.” Specifically, he said, Heritage would be partnering with the conservative state policy think tanks which “are really a key to our approach to turning Washington around.” He wants to help “give them the muscle… to push their initiatives.” It’s all part of what he called, during his formal speech, an emphasis on “competitive federalism,” to take policy decisions out of Washington and let states “compete for the best business environment, the best tax code, the best education system.”
In other words, yes and no. Yes, Heritage — and its sister, the more overtly political Heritage Action 501(c)(4) organization — will be more activist in terms of trying to mobilize or catalyze political action. But no, it “won’t change our core mission” of policy research.
Do you think Heritage’s approach can beat the liberals and help enact conservative solutions?
Last week, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told Bloomberg Television that he would “probably not” support the Marketplace Fairness Act, an Internet sales tax bill that passed through the Senate by a 69–27 margin.
Boehner’s reasoning for not supporting the bill? “Moving this bill where you’ve got 50 different sales tax codes, it’s a mess out there,” he said. “You’re going to make it much more difficult for online retailers to be able to comply.”
Many small business owners are already frustrated by the complexity and high costs associated with the Internet sales tax. The Heritage Foundation has put together this infographic to highlight some of their concerns:
Do you think the complexity of the sales tax codes will over-burden small business owners?