Last September, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service released a report showing that tax cuts for the rich — contrary to GOP orthodoxy — have minimal effect on economic growth or job creation. Instead, they simply increase income inequality. Republicans pressured the CRS to pull the report down; it was eventually re-posted with the same conclusions.

Last month, another non-partisan agency, the Congressional Budget Office, released an analysis showing that one of the GOP’s favorite corporate tax ideas would end up pushing jobs overseas. Again, instead of reexamining their ideas, Republicans are attacking the messenger:

The Congressional Budget Office is defending a recent report on how U.S. multinational corporations are taxed, after a top Republican criticized the analysis as biased. [...] “This report purports to provide an even-handed review of different policy issues related to the taxation of foreign source income,” [House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave] Camp (R-MI) wrote to [CBO Director Doug] Elmendorf last month.

“However, a closer analysis of the report reveals that it is heavily slanted and biased in favor of one specific approach to the taxation of foreign source income – and relies heavily on sources that tend to support that conclusion while ignoring sources that support a different conclusion,” he added.

Elmendorf defended the report, saying it “presents the key issues fairly and objectively and that its findings are well grounded in economic theory and are consistent with empirical studies in this area.”

The GOP’s idea — known as a “territorial” tax system — would permanently exempt U.S. corporations from paying taxes on profits they make overseas. CBO found such a system would result in “increasing incentives to shift business operations and reported income to countries with lower tax rates.”

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) is gearing up to release a corporate tax overhaul. Much like the last few versions he’s proposed, the plan is expected to include some favorite Republicans provisions that would make it easier for corporations to avoid taxes and offshore jobs.

But according to the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim and Zach Carter, the plan may include one interesting facet: a new tax treatment for derivatives, the credit instruments that were at the epicenter of the 2008 financial crisis. And Camp may be proposing the idea out of spite at CEOs who supported new revenue during negotiations over the so-called “fiscal cliff”:

One Republican operative told HuffPost that Camp’s bill is political payback for the CEOs collaborating with the Fix the Debt coalition, which worked with corporate chiefs who had pressured Republicans to accept tax increases as part of a deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff at the close of 2012. [...]

Camp’s bill would establish a new tax regime for derivatives, requiring banks to declare the fair market value of the products at the end of each year. Any increase in value would be considered corporate income, subject to taxation. It’s a more aggressive tax treatment than Wall Street enjoys for either derivatives or for trading in more traditional securities.

Under Camp’s plan, banks would have to pay taxes on the increase in value of their derivatives, treating the increase as income; it’s a more efficient way of taxing profits than the current, convoluted system. “It’s a pretty bold step and I think this idea is sensible,” said Steve Rosenthal of the Tax Policy Center. The current system has “no basis in the reality of economics,” said tax lawyer David Miller. “As a result, sophisticated taxpayers are free to choose a tax treatment that minimizes their taxes.”

Members of the financial services industry are, predictably, freaking out about the proposal: “It doesn’t make any sense,” said one trader. The derivatives market, which is still largely unregulated, totals about $639 trillion.

Camp’s bill also preserves an important provision that prevents homeowners from having to pay a huge tax bill when they receive a mortgage modification. The provision was temporarily extended recently, and would be made permanent under Camp’s plan.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) is preparing to unveil the GOP’s corporate tax reform package, Reuters reports. Like in his previous proposals, Camp “wants to slash the top corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent and simplify the code.” President Obama has also suggested an interest in lowering the corporate tax rate and cleaning out loopholes, so there is some hope that corporate tax reform could be grounds for bipartisan agreement.

However, Camp and his Republican colleagues have some unfortunate ideas about where corporate tax reform should go. Here are the key facts to know before the debate starts:

– Corporate profits are at record highs, while corporate taxes are at record lows. While the U.S. has a 35 percent corporate tax rate on paper, few corporations actually pay that, due to a proliferation of loopholes, deductions, and the widespread use of tax havens. In 2011, the last year for which data is available, the effective corporate tax rate fell to 12.1 percent, a forty-year low. The corporate tax used to track resonably well with corporate profits, but the two have become decoupled in recent years, with profits shooting up while corporate taxes as a share of the economy plummeted.

– Many of the biggest corporations pay no corporate income tax at all. As Citizens for Tax Justice has found, many of the biggest corporations have effective tax rates near zero. 26 major corporations paid no corporate income tax between 2008 and 2011, while making a collective $205 billion in profits.

– The GOP’s favorite corporate tax idea helps outsource jobs. Republicans love to promote a “territorial” corporate tax system, under which offshore profits made by U.S. companies are never taxed. (Currently, those profits are taxed when they are brought back to the U.S.) The Congressional Budget Office recently reported that such a plan results in “increasing incentives to shift business operations and reported income to countries with lower tax rates.”

– Corporate tax reform should raise revenue. Corporate taxes used to make up about one-third of federal revenue; now it makes up less than 9 percent. The U.S. used to raise about 5 percent of GDP in corporate tax revenue; now it raises below 2 percent. As former White House economist Jared Bernstein noted, “locking in these historically low revenue levels, either as a share of GDP, total receipts, or profits, would be yet another self-inflected wound.”

Seemingly ignoring that over than 3 million more Americans voted for President Obama than Mitt Romney on Tuesday, Congressional Republicans are moving quickly to embrace Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) call to adopt a tax “compromise” that is virtually identical to the tax proposal that Romney made the centerpiece of his failed campaign.

The running theme this week is what Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called the “Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale” that the country can increase revenues simply by lowering tax rates:

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA): On ABC’s This Week, Chambliss said, “Bowles-Simpson said, look, eliminate all these tax credits and tax deductions. You can generate somewhere 1 to 1.2 trillion in additional revenue. You can actually lower tax rates by doing that. And I think at the end of the day, what’s got to happen, George, we’ve got to get this economy going again.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK): In a Friday column, House Budget Committee member Cole wrote: “However, raising tax rates is not the only way to increase revenue, nor is it the best way. Speaker Boehner has proposed comprehensive tax reform to raise revenue and lower rates. Eliminating inefficient loopholes and deductions will generate economic growth while creating a simpler, fairer tax code.”

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX): In a Wednesday Tweet, House Ways and Means Committee member Brady opined: “Stronger economic growth from tax reform that lowers rates and closes loopholes will generate higher revenue to bring the deficit down.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA): In a letter to his Republican caucus, the House Majority Leader wrote: “What would be best is a fundamental reform of the tax code that lowers rates, broadens the base, makes America’s businesses competitive again, and reduces the burden imposed by taxes on work and investment.”

Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI): In a Wednesday press release, the House Ways and Means Chairman wrote: “There is a better path forward than simply increasing tax rates, and one in which both sides can claim victory. We can address both our jobs crisis and our debt crisis by focusing on tax reform that strengthens the economy. There is bipartisan support for tax reform that closes loopholes and lowers rates.”

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA): On Fox News Sunday, House Republican Policy Committee Chairman Price, a member of both the Ways and Means and Budget Committees, said “We can increase revenue without increasing the tax rates on anybody in this country.”

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says there will be no significant negative impact on the economy should the lower rates on the wealthiest Americans be allowed to expire. And the notion that lowering rates will magically create more revenue is indeed a right-wing pipe dream.

The broad corporate tax reform plan released by the Obama administration this week included a provision for a minimum tax on corporate profits earned overseas, a rule aimed at preventing corporations from taking advantage of offshore tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. The U.S. loses billions of dollars a year in tax revenue because of corporations parking money in low- or no-tax countries.

Closing a loophole that could cost the U.S. $90 billion this year, however, isn’t popular among Republicans like Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. While Obama’s plan represents “a step forward,” it still double-taxes corporations who have to pay taxes both in the U.S. and in the country where foreign profits were earned, Camp claimed. Camp instead wants the U.S. to switch to a “territorial” tax system, in which companies wouldn’t pay any taxes on profits earned overseas, as he told NPR this morning:

CAMP: They don’t really address the territorial reforms that I think are so essential to make our companies competitive. [...] We tax them here and we tax them there. … This double taxation traps money overseas, and we think there’s about a trillion dollars that could be brought back to the U.S. and invested here — private money — that would really help get our economy going again. That’s a piece they didn’t include. … I hope we can develop into something that will do a better job making sure American companies that make profits overseas can bring those back and invest them in jobs for Americans.

Under current law, companies can defer taxation on profits earned overseas until they return the money to the U.S. Under the territorial system Camp wants, however, companies would never pay U.S. taxes on overseas profits. As Citizens for Tax Justice explained, this would obviously increase the incentive to shift profits overseas and to hide money in tax havens. “We should be able to agree that our tax system should not favor investment and job creation offshore over investment and job creation in the U.S,” CTJ noted. “Our current system does exactly that, and a territorial system could actually increase this bias in the tax code.”

The minimum tax on overseas profits, in contrast, would help shut down the tax havens that shield companies from American taxes and end one of the nation’s biggest tax expenditures. As the Center for American Progress’ Seth Hanlon has noted, corporate tax dodging through tax havens increases the tax burden on individuals and domestic businesses, worsens the country’s fiscal situation, and actually spurs overseas job creation. A minimum tax, in contrast, would combat this abuse without harming American economic competitiveness.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman David Camp (R-MI) today released his long-promised plan to overhaul the country’s corporate tax code. As he’s been hinting, the plan not only cuts the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, but also implements what’s known as a “territorial system,” which exempts U.S. corporations from paying taxes on money they earn overseas.

Currently, U.S. corporations pay to the Treasury the difference between the tax rate of the country in which they earn money and the U.S. rate. (So money earned in a country where the rate is 25 percent would require a corporation to pay 10 percent — the difference between 35 percent and 25 percent — to the U.S.) However, corporations are allowed to defer paying their U.S. share of taxes until the bring the money back to the U.S., giving them every incentive to shift and keep money (and jobs) offshore.

Instead of fixing this problem, Camp’s plan to shift to a territorial system, as Citizens for Tax Justice explained, will make it even worse:

First, [under a territorial system] corporations would have a greater incentive to engage in profit-shifting, meaning practices used to disguise U.S. profits as foreign profits. A common example is the manipulation of transfer pricing to shift corporate profits into tax havens (countries that do not tax, or that barely tax, certain types of profits).

Second, corporations would have a greater incentive to shift actual operations — and jobs — to other countries.

Our current system already encourages these practices because U.S. corporations are allowed to “defer” their U.S. taxes on their offshore profits. But the incentives would be even greater under a territorial system, in which corporations would NEVER pay U.S. taxes on their offshore profits.

Camp said today during an interview that “the rest of the world has gone to a lower corporate rate and a territorial system of taxation. So our employers are really at a competitive disadvantage when they try to do business around the world.” However, governments with territorial systems are “having tremendous problems enforcing their existing international corporate tax rules, particularly the transfer pricing rules.” It’s such a problem, in fact, that “the European Union is considering moving away from the territorial system for determining how corporate profits are allocated among its member states.”

Camp has already proven that he is not concerned with actually having corporations pay taxes, saying that corporate tax dodging is all the more reason to cut the corporate tax rate. But U.S. corporations already pay the second-lowest taxes in the developed world and are sitting on record amounts of cash, so there’s little reason to slash their taxes any further.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced today their picks for the fiscal super committee created by the debt ceiling deal, naming Sens. Jon Kyl (AZ), Pat Toomey (PA), Rob Portman (OH), and Reps. Jeb Hensarling (TX), Dave Camp (MI), and Fred Upton (MI) to the body. The committee is tasked with finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction by November, and one of the key issues will be whether revenue increases are included. Basic economics and the American people call for increasing revenues, with a new CNN poll showing 63 percent of Americans want the committee to raise taxes on the wealthy, but several of the GOP picks are hard-right conservatives who likely oppose such a “balanced approach.” Other critical issue will be entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, and whether the committee makes cuts to military spending.

Here’s what you need to know about each of the GOP super committee members: Read more

Congressional Republicans last week, as we’ve been documenting, blew up negotiations meant to produce a deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling due to their insistence that no taxes be increased anywhere, even on those making more than half a million dollars annually. Summing up the attitude that the GOP has taken toward the obvious need to raise new revenues, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that, if given a choice, he would rather have a bigger deficit than see taxes go up on anyone, even the richest Americans:

MR. WESSEL: Would you rather reach [a deficit of] 3% [of GDP] even if it required some revenue increases, or hold the line on revenue and settle for a higher deficit?

MR. CAMP: What we want to do is not have higher revenues. Because the issue is who’s going to pay them. Their idea is always, quote unquote, “rich people over $250,000.” Half of that, as we know, is small business, which is the very sector we need to see some growth in.

For starters, Camp is simply wrong that half of those making more than $250,000 are people running small businesses. This is a common Republican claim that has no basis in reality.

But its Camp’s clear pronouncement that a bigger deficit is preferable to raising taxes even on the richest two percent of Americans that makes his priorities clear. When asked “if you had to raise revenues, where would be the least damaging place to look?” Camp literally refused to name anything. “I can’t think of a least damaging place,” he said.

However, Camp, unlike many of his Republican colleagues, did say that the debt ceiling needs to be raised before the August 2 deadline identified by the Treasury Department. “We need to because we can’t default,” he said. “The concern is, if you get close to that date without a deal, what the markets may do.” Several other Republicans have floated the possibility of forcing the U.S. over the cliff and into defaulting on some obligations for a short period while a deal is brokered.