re: #290 Obdicut

Of course we can. You can certainly tax assets that are being moved out of the country. We also don’t have to give tax breaks for foreign income.

I don’t know exactly what you mean by tax breaks for foreign income. Oil company subsidies, which I don’t understand either?

However if you mean tax deduction for foreign taxes paid, that is standard practice and would otherwise amount to double taxation.

If you tax assets moved out of the country, that amounts to currency controls. Do you want to have to get government permission to send money overseas? If you did you would get a one time payment and never see the money or the company come back, or foreign investors who would be unsure of being able to get their investments back.

The issue of encouraging investment in the USA is complex and not simply a matter of lowering taxes which are already very low historically (after deductions). We have already lost so much manufacturing that I suspect the domestic mindset has degenerated to not considering anything that doesn’t have a quick short payback. Other countries beat us not only with lower labor costs, but with government incentives. We think government incentives are anti capitalist./