Do Tax Breaks Create Jobs?

There are two fundamental Republican articles of faith with regard to the economy. First, “tax cuts increase tax revenue.” Second, “tax cuts create jobs.” We have already debunked the first of these ideas (see: Do Tax Cuts Increase Revenue?), so let’s look at this second Republican belief.

There is really one fact that significantly challenges this faith-based belief: Profits are at record highs, and the level and lengths of unemployment it at a high. The idea that tax cuts create jobs is based on the idea that letting people keep more of their money will lead them to growth their businesses by hiring more people, and thus decrease unemployment. If profits are up and unemployment is down, this logic does not work.

When politicians talk about tax cuts, they are typically referring to personal income taxes. If I am a highly compensated executive, and I get a tax cut, that means I take home more money. What will I do with this extra money? Will I go out an hire someone? Probably not. Why? Because companies hire people, individuals don’t hire people with their net salary.

“But,” I can hear my Republican friends say, “if that highly-compensated executive decides to invest that extra income in a business, this will create jobs.” Again, probably not. If I own a business, my primary concern is not to create jobs, it is to maximize profits. If there is extra money, and I don’t absolutely have to hire more people to grow the business, I am not going to hire. I am going to pay myself and my shareholders first. And because taxes are paid on profits, not revenue, I am actually inclined to keep my costs (labor) down so I can maximize profit.

There is a reason that the rich don’t suffer in a recession; that middle-class wages have been stagnant for 30 year; that the majority of the nation’s wealth is in the hand of the top 1%. Conservative tax policy has dominated for 30 years. And in this Great Recession, with profits way up, there is not need to hire more people. And in this context, with a skyrocketing national debt, with millions out of work, the Republicans can still talk endlessly of how tax cuts are the answer to creating jobs. No. Tax cuts are the answer to enriching the already-wealthy.

A Forbes blogger asks the question, “do tax cuts create ‘real’ jobs?” The answer in this pro-business publication is rather surprising: “Do tax cuts create jobs? No, just deficits.” This article goes on to say,

U.S. public companies pay well-below the official 35% tax rate while 13.5 million American workers search unsuccessfully for jobs  And start ups tell me that tax cuts don’t affect whether they’ll create new jobs. In short, the tax cut rhetoric, while effective politics, is lousy economics.

George H. W. Bush wisely pointed out in his 1980 debate with Ronald Reagan that expecting to balance the budget with tax cuts and defense spending increases was “voodoo economics.”  But along with Reagan’s ascendancy came the rise of huge budget deficits — that Bush wisely helped end when he agreed to raise taxes in 1990.

Despite $858 billion in December 2010 tax cuts, companies still complain that they pay too much in tax. General Electric (GE) has become famous for paying no taxes on its $5.1 billion in 2010 U.S. profits while keeping a big staff of lawyers on hand to make sure it pays as few of them as possible. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that GE is not alone and that the prevailing estimate for the actual U.S. corporate tax rate is 25% — costing the U.S. about $100 billion in lost revenue.

But corporations have absolutely no reason to complain about taxes. After all, they earned record 2010 profits of $1.68 trillion and 85% of them are beating their first quarter 2011 earnings estimates as 70% are growing revenue faster than expected while their operating margins stand at a near record 19.8%.

And companies are achieving that record profitability by squeezing workers. After all, 2010 productivity rose 3.9% while unit labor costs fell 1.5%. To get more work out of the same number of workers while paying them less, it helps to have 13.5 million people out of work and the easy ability to hire part-time labor and outsource to countries that pay much lower wages.

So tax cuts have not spurred big companies to create jobs. But what about start ups? Based on my October 2010 interviews with 17 start up CEOs, my conclusion is that not a single one of them would create a job based on tax cuts. All of them told me that their decision to create a new job would be based on whether the long-term cost of that new job would be offset by higher revenues and profits.

As Dick Cheney famously pointed out — deficits don’t matter. And his supporters are probably profiting from the weak-dollar, commodity-inflation bet whose profitability depends on the persistence of those deficits.

If Washington was serious about creating new jobs, it would make companies pay the 35% rate — yielding $600 billion in tax revenue on their 2010 profits. That and the peace dividend that should flow in the wake of Bin Laden’s execution, would go a long way towards balancing the budget and creating a climate that would spur a boost in capital flows to new ventures.

As always, Rachel Maddow brings up some excellent issues on this topic:

Another astute blogger pointed out:

“Rush Limbaugh famously said, “Ive never been employed by a poor person” which is true, if irrelevant

­. I’ve never been employed by a rich person myself… I’ve been employed by a lot of companies though. An increase in taxation on millionair­es would mean nothing, let me repeat, NOTHING in the way of jobs.

Corporatio­ns employ large numbers of people, not individual billionair­es. If a billionair­e got a tax break, he wouldn’t immediatel­y invest it into his company for the purpose of hiring new employees. There is a salient difference between taxing an individual CEO’s paycheck, and taxing the corporatio­n itself.

Rather he would most likely save it (along with his other excess funds); which again does NOTHING to stimulate the economy or jobs. A Poor person with excess funds, on the other hand, would be prepared to spend it, which WOULD stimulate the economy.

If you really wanted a fairer system, I’d eliminate the tax on the first 20k of EVERYONE’s income. Then leave all the loopholes and tax cuts that the rich enjoy in the dust, and raise taxes on everyone making over 250k a year. If everyone is sacrificin­g, those poised to benefit societal rewards should pay most of the costs.” (source)

While he was Governor, “according to the U.S. Labor Department, the state ranked 47th in the entire country in jobs growth. Fourth from last. The only ones that did worse? Ohio, Michigan and Louisiana. In other words, two rustbelt states and another that lost its biggest city to a hurricane. The Massachusetts jobs growth over that period, a pitiful 0.9%, badly lagged other high-skill, high-wage, knowledge economy states like New York (2.7%), California (4.7%) and North Carolina (7.6%). The national average: More than 5% (MarketWatch, 2/23/11).