July 18, 2006

Tax Foundation Launches New Podcast with Hubbard Interview

For immediate release
Media contact: William Ahern (202) 464-5101 

WASHINGTON, D.C—The U.S. corporate tax system drags down the economy far more than corporate tax systems in other nations, according to Glenn Hubbard, Dean of the Columbia Business School and former Director of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Hubbard made his comments on the need for U.S. corporate tax reform in the Tax Foundation’s first weekly podcast (available at www.taxfoundation.org/podcast). The Foundation will publish a podcast each Tuesday, featuring an interview that sheds light on the nation’s tax system.

Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin will be the guest in the second podcast, scheduled for Tuesday, July 25.

Hubbard reported on recent research conducted by numerous economists who have found that the U.S. corporate tax is a much larger cost to our economy than was believed to be the case just 10 years ago.

“In a global economy, the high U.S. corporate tax is a job killer and an investment killer,” said Hubbard. “It also leads to a high cost of compliance. All of these costs are borne by somebody, and that somebody is us—either in terms of the prices of the goods we buy, the wages we earn, or the returns we get on our investments.”

For lawmakers, Hubbard’s advice is to consider that the U.S.’s corporate tax rate is currently the second highest among nations in the OECD.

Hodge asked Hubbard to comment on the dramatic tax reforms that many Eastern European nations are enacting.

“Even the major Western European nations have passed major corporate tax cuts recently,” Hubbard pointed out. “The U.S. is rapidly becoming the odd man out.”
Hubbard also addressed the impact of the 2003 tax cuts, the merits of corporate integration and the ways that U.S. health care finance could better be handled by the tax code.

The interview is Number 1 in the Tax Foundation’s Podcast series, titled, “Corporate Tax Reform: A Conversation with Glenn Hubbard.” It’s available online at
www.taxfoundation.org/podcast/.

Best known for its annual calculation of Tax Freedom Day®, the Tax Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that has monitored fiscal policy at the federal, state and local levels since 1937.

# # #