House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan says the nation’s complicated tax code provides loopholes to determine “winners and losers,” preventing U.S. businesses from being more competitive in the global arena. The Wisconsin Republican also told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren that improving the moribund economy is partly dependent on eliminating “crony capitalism.”
“Our tax code is extremely complicated — it is so complicated that it is one of the reasons why our economy is not growing well right now,” Ryan said. “And we do what I call crony capitalism — we pick winners and losers in the tax code through loopholes — some businesses don’t pay a lot of taxes, make good money because they use loopholes. Other businesses play by the rules, pay really high tax rates.
“And right now, we tax our businesses at much higher tax rates than our foreign competitors tax theirs, and we’re losing in global competition — if we want to have a good economy, prosperous America, we need to be competitive on our tax policies,” he said. “And right now, we’re taxing American businesses at rates much higher than our foreign competitors are taxing theirs.”
Ryan — who is releasing a video Wednesday on simplifying the tax code — said it is imperative to eliminate loopholes and “lower taxes on everybody.” He also said that while traveling across Wisconsin, business owners consistently asked him what the government is going to be doing to eliminate high taxes and excessive regulations.
“And those are the things that are not being addressed in this new jobs bill the president's sending us, but those are the things that our job creators are telling us they need that kind of certainty so they can actually start planning and investing and having confidence,” Ryan said.
“One of those things we proposed in our budget was to lower our tax rates on businesses, individuals to no higher than 25 percent, but to pay for that by closing loopholes,” he said. “Get rid of the loopholes, lower the tax rates to make us more competitive, so we don’t tax our job creators more than our foreign competitors are taxing their companies.”
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