Paul Ryan on CNN: We Need Tax Reform To Keep American Jobs In America

In his CNN town hall from Wisconsin, Speaker Paul Ryan outlined how tax reform will keep America competitive w/ the rest of the world and grow the economy, boost wages, and increase take-home-pay

August 23, 2017

In his CNN town hall from Wisconsin, Speaker Paul Ryan outlined how tax reform will keep America competitive w/ the rest of the world and grow the economy, boost wages, and increase take-home-pay.

Take a look at his answers below that detail why now is the time to take up and pass this legislation:

SPEAKER RYAN: Tax reform’s different. The entire tax cut bill, the entire tax reform bill, can go into one bill through the House and the Senate. So procedurally, it makes it much easier. Here’s the other point, I’d say. If we keep taxing our job creators, our businesses, at much, much higher tax rates than our foreign competitors tax theirs, we’re going to lose. We’re going to lose in global competition. I was just meeting with a father/son business in — I was doing office hours in Janesville today – I met with a father/son business in – down in South Central Wisconsin – I don’t want to tell their names because I don’t want to give them grief, but down in Genoa City. They have an electricity business, they make electrical parts for SnapOn and for other companies. Their biggest competitor is Canada, a company in Canada. Their tax rate, they’re a corporation, a small business, 35%. You know what the Canadian tax rate is? 15%.

Eight out of ten businesses in America file their taxes as people, as individuals. We call them subchapter “s” corporations, LLCs. Their top effective tax rate is 44.6%. Canadians are at 15%. The Irish are at 12.5%. China, 25. The average tax rate of businesses in the industrialized world is 22.5%, and we’re taxing American businesses 35 to almost 45%? That is a recipe for disaster and if they’re successful enough to make money by selling a product overseas, they can’t bring their money back because of our tax laws. And so what’s happening is we’re losing American businesses. The biggest business we had in Wisconsin, publicly traded, was Johnson Controls. The thermostat here is probably a Johnson Controls thermostat. They are now an Irish company. Their worldwide tax rate is 12.5%. They’re not an American company anymore. We’re losing businesses left and right and this is among the reasons we have to have fundamental tax reform.

SPEAKER RYAN: Also, it’s a matter of economic growth, it’s faster wages, but it is also fairness. What we’re proposing on the individual side is get rid of the loopholes, get rid of the carveouts, just lower people’s tax rates. Let you keep more of your own money. And simplify the code so much you can fill out your taxes on a postcard. You don’t have to go to some an accountant to try to do it all.

 

We want a tax code built for growth, built for economic activity. We want a tax code that raises wages, keeps American companies in America, gives us faster economic growth. We haven’t hit 3 percent growth since before the last recession in 2008. So that is one of the reasons why we’re not getting the kind of take-home pay we should be getting as people. And we believe regulatory relief, tax cuts, tax reform is the secret to getting faster economic growth. so that’s is why we’re committed to getting this done this year. Getting it done this year. It hasn’t been done since the year I got my driver’s license. 1986. It’s high time we fix this mess of a tax code and get ourselves in a position where American businesses, it makes sense to stay American and tax our businesses in a competitive way so we’re not pushing them overseas.