While claiming to close loopholes, Democrats are opening brand new ones for special interests to avoid the new Made-in-America tax (also known as the book minimum tax). This tax sticks nearly half of the new tax burden on American manufacturers, the very businesses that will create jobs and help us get out of the recession.
Here are the five most nefarious loopholes in the Democrats’ proposal:
1. Crushing manufacturing jobs while giving handouts to green corporations. Democrats are handing out hundreds of billions of dollars in new green energy tax credits to prop up politically connected industries, including big banks, which profit from these tax credits. Democrats will also provide these greenwashed big businesses with an exclusion from the book minimum tax. While the typical American manufacturer faces a higher tax bill, Senate Finance Chairman Wyden has bragged, “we believe renewable energy is fully protected.”
2. As Americans pay higher prices at the pump, corporations get special treatment for EV purchases. American families continue to see painful prices at the pump, yet they’re forced to subsidize corporations’ purchases of electric vehicle fleets, which Democrats bankroll and protect from the new tax.
3. Profitable chipmakers get a special carveout. The recent CHIPS Act included $24 billion in cash-payable tax credits – literally checks – for the largest and most profitable chipmakers, which will keep their already-low corporate tax rates due to their special exclusion from the book minimum tax.
4. Bribery and Bad Actor Bailout. Companies that have engaged in bribery, or that have been forced to pay penalties or fines for breaking the law, now get to write off these expenses under the book minimum tax — overturning the tax code’s current prohibition on such benefits. Who says crime doesn’t pay?
5. Union Pension Exclusion. While tens of millions of Americans see their own 401(k) plans crumbling in Biden’s cruel economy, powerful labor union executives lobbied to exclude their union pensions from the minimum tax.