Corporate Tax Holiday: didn’t help demand in ’04, won’t help demand now

Standard

WaPo Op-Ed (props to Atrios):

This is a provably bad idea. Congress passed a repatriation tax holiday in 2004. The Congress­ional Research Service reported “little evidence” that new investment was spurred. A recent study by the Democratic staff of a Senate subcommittee found that the 15 companies that repatriated the most profits, more than $150 billion, ended up cutting their U.S. workforces by nearly 21,000 jobs.

via No time for a corporate tax ‘holiday’ – The Washington Post.

It’s a simple fact: CEOs of large companies in bad times work to create efficiency and keep the balance sheet in the black. The easiest way they can do that is to lay off workers, replace current labor with cheaper labor and hoard cash. If they don’t spend the additional cash, it has little effect on the nation’s economy.