Commentary - Oct 31, 2004
Dan L'Abbe
Employment Market - Voters will Decide
American jobs continue to disappear overseas and the concept of exporting jobs is not unusual anymore.
Some people feel it is good to outsource jobs; others feel that it’s eroding our economy and employment
markets. Either way there are less jobs in the U. S. than there was in the last decade. Both
presidential candidates have different perspectives on how the U.S. should handle the exporting of US jobs.
George Bush and his administration have appointed officials that outsource jobs and continue to
defend the outsourcing of jobs as an important way to create better paying jobs here in the US.
Two key Bush proposals include:
- making it easier for companies to defer taxes until profits flow back to the US and;
- to setup overseas operations to avoid paying taxes.
Current law imposes some limits on what taxes can be deferred. Currently, American companies
are limited in their ability to use foreign tax shelters by a system of income “baskets” that
reduce their ability to eliminate their taxes by using complicated cross-border transactions.
Bush’s Treasury would have these rules loosened to eliminate restrictions for deferring foreign income.
John Kerry and John Edwards have a different plan. Under their plan, 99 percent of companies will pay lower taxes
– but no company will pay lower taxes just because it creates jobs overseas. Kerry and Edwards do not believe
that the government should force a U.S. company that chooses to create jobs in the US to pay higher taxes and
suffer a competitive disadvantage with companies that choose to move jobs to a tax haven and keep profits there permanently.
Kerry’s plan would also allow companies to defer the income they earn when they locate production
in a foreign country that serves that foreign country’s markets specifically. This will ensure American
companies can compete in international markets, while maintaining a level playing-field at home in the US.
Each candidate has their own proposal for keeping jobs in the U.S. This November, the voting population
will have to decide which plan they believe will work to improve the beleaguered US employment market.
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Granite Solutions Groupe (Granite) is a San Francisco based recruiting firm that specializes in recruiting and
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