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**OCTOBER 27, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

Warren Delivers Again

Her corporate minimum tax plugs a revenue gap with progressive
reform-and unites her party to seal Build Back Better.

Elizabeth Warren has proven once again why she is the indispensable
Democrat. And she has proven once again why ideas matter and how to lead
from the left.

Her presidential campaign generated such a large shelf of ideas on
social policy and progressive taxation that it became a punch line ("I
have a plan for that"). Unlike in 2008, when progressives had no
developed plans to combat Tim Geithner's imperative of protecting the
banks at all costs, they are equipped with alternatives when Democrats
go searching for answers. One such opportunity came this week.

Warren has spent months refining her idea for a corporate minimum tax.
The concept is as elegant as it is simple: Corporations with a billion
dollars or more in annual profits must report to the IRS what they
report to shareholders, and pay at least 15 percent on their actual
profits.

The bill was waiting for the right moment to rendezvous with a political
need. That moment has just arrived, and it will help seal the
Democrats' budget deal. Warren's office estimates that it will raise
several hundred billion dollars

over ten years.

Warren's bill, initially co-sponsored by Sen. Angus King of Maine, now
has Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden as a co-sponsor. In order to gain
wider support, Warren agreed to allow some socially defensible tax
credits, such as R&D, clean-energy, and housing tax credits, as well as
legitimate tax-planning devices such as carry-forwards of real losses.

Warren has also again demonstrated her remarkable gift for playing well
with others and fashioning improbable coalitions. Kyrsten Sinema has
opposed Biden's plan to raise corporate rates across the board, but
she now supports

Warren's well-targeted 15 percent minimum. It looks like Joe Manchin
will come along, too.

So besides being smart policy, Warren's leadership also has the virtue
of bringing Sinema and Manchin back inside the tent, and restoring a
semblance of Democratic unity-around a tax proposal that in many ways
is more progressive than where Biden began.

The release announcing the bill singles out Amazon, with a reported $45
billion in profits last year as families struggled through the pandemic,
but just 4.3 percent in taxes, far below the statutory corporate rate of
21 percent. Indeed, Warren reports, 55 large profitable corporations
with profits totaling $40 billion assembled so many tax gimmicks that
they got money back from the government.

Warren's bill fits hand in glove with the Democrats' other proposal,
to tax the annual gains in asset value for the richest 700 or so
Americans. That may be a slightly harder sell because of technical
questions.

The move to target the very top-the billionaires and mega-corporations
that get off with lower tax rates than minimum-wage workers-is also
shrewd class politics and partisan politics. Let Republicans explain why
they oppose it.

It's about time that the spotlight moved off the divisions among
Democrats and onto the Republicans, who block all the popular parts of
Biden's investment program and defend predation by billionaires.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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Why Congress Must End America's Merger Free-for-All

Aggressive anti-monopoly enforcement can only go so far without clearing
out a thicket of bad judicial rulings and establishing new laws. BY
RON KNOX

Will the Reconciliation Bill Do Anything to Secure Workers' Rights?

One provision, which appears to have the required votes, may help. BY
HAROLD MEYERSON

The 'Sensible' Climate Compromise Is Not Sensible

Relying on nuclear and carbon capture to decarbonize the economy is
liberal climate denial. BY ALEXANDER SAMMON

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