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Rudy Giuliani on CorporationsFormer Mayor of New York City; Republican Candidate for 2000 Senate (NY) |
There are other taxes we should get rid of. We should get rid of death tax and a whole group of others, but the first one should be the corporate tax.
He’s certainly not the only Republican politician to state this view. But you won’t find many economists, Democrat or Republican, who subscribe to it. George H.W. Bush famously called this view “voodoo economics” while campaigning for the Republican nomination in 1980.
Economists agree that lower taxes tend to produce higher economic growth, which does produce additional tax revenue--but not enough to pay for what’s lost. The former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush, published a paper last year in which he calculated that over a number of years, capital gains tax cuts generate enough growth to pay for maybe half of the lost revenue. Cuts in taxes on wages would bring enough revenue to pay for about 17% of revenue lost.
A: But I’m not involved in the day-to-day operations. I’m an owner of the firm.
Q: But people could sign up for your company in order to influence you if you became President. Why not just sever ties & put out a list of all your clients?
A: I couldn’t do that. There are confidentiality agreements that surround the relationship that businesses have with law firms & security firms. I can tell you that every client o GP of any significance while I was involved in the day-to-day operations has been discussed, and the reality is that none of them amount to anything other than ethical, lawful, decent work. And none of them involve any kind of conflict of any kind.
Q: So you won’t sever your financial ties with your company>
A: I’ve severed every tie I can think of. I’ll live up to whatever ethical or legal obligations required. But I’m not going to do more than what is absolutely required.
A: No how, no way. It’s not going to happen. Give me a break. Of course, London’s not going to replace New York.
Q: Well, the number of IPOs is higher in London in 2007 than in New York.
A: This is the strongest economy on earth. If this generation can’t keep it that way, shame on us. What country do millions of people want to come to--the United States. China and India are trying to develop themselves to be like us, which is why we’ve got a heck of a lot we can sell to them
Q: So how do you explain the loss of business in New York going to London?
A: I explain it based on some of the mistakes that we make when we overregulate and we overtax. Our corporate tax rate is the second highest in the world. Everybody around the world wants to lower corporate tax rates but the leading Democratic candidates, who want to raise taxes 25% or 30%. That would be a disaster for this country.
A: Suppose you’re planning now where to put your business, in the United States or in France [where corporate taxes are low], and you’ve got a presidential race going on in the US and one side that could win that race is saying, “We are going to raise taxes by $3 trillion”--which is what the ultimate number would be--or they look at rates more, “We’re going to raise the rate from 35% to 39.6%” or, “We’re going to raise capital gains from 15% to 20%,“ or one of them says from 15% to 28% & he’s reading [French President Nicolas] Sarkozy’s book, Testimony, and he hears Sarkozy saying, ”I’m going to reduce rates.“ Sarkozy wants to reduce the corporate rate even though it’s already lower than the US Only Japan has a higher one. So if you’re making choices like that now and it takes you 2 or 3 years to build your factory or it takes 2 or 3 years to build your office building, I have to imagine if we’re not losing business already, we’re starting to.
The outcome was typical of the Giuliani years In August 1997, Giuiani announced that Bear-Stearns & Company would build a new NYC headquarters [in a deal including] $75 million in tax breaks. Asked whether the city approved the tax breaks after Bear-Stearns had threatened to abandon Manhattan, The package marked the administration’s 33rd so-called corporate retention deal.
Giuliani occasionally criticized these kind of deals as giveaways in his 1993 campaign for mayor. But he quickly embraced the tactics once he got into office. Corporate New York got the message. Almost routinely, whenever a large company’s lease for office space was due to expire, it hired real estate brokers to ride out to Jersey City and solicit a proposal from a major developer. Then came handout time.
Giuliani and his team of senior executives, many of whom served with him during his eight-year tenure as Mayor, will draw upon their experiences in emergency preparedness, public safety, leadership during crises, and financial management--all of which were instrumental in turning around a City described as unmanageable & ungovernable to a City that is now a worldwide example of good government & effective management. This management expertise will provide clients with a comprehensive set of solutions addressing critical concerns of major corporations today