The cameras were rolling in the Dirksen Senate Office Building today as Michigan Senator Carl Levin gaveled in his hearing on Apple’s tax practices.  The news accounts will cover the fiery exchanges between senators (Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, for instance, said that the hearing had one purpose, namely “to bully one of America's greatest success stories . . . If anyone should be on trial here, [...]

Apple's Tim Cook is testifying in front of a Senate subcommittee on what Apple sees as a vastly simpler corporate tax structure to replace the outdated, overly complex structure that the U.S. has today.  Listen to what he had to say in his opening statement. We'll have updates later this afternoon.

Tomorrow, Apple CEO Tim Cook will put forward the tenets of a reform plan that could fix the broken, antiquated U.S. tax code.  His testimony before a Senate panel will focus on shaping a competitive, market-based tax code that has a lower rate and enhances American innovation.  We need to responsibly modernize our tax structure, to help American companies create jobs and new opportunities here at [...]

We all know that it’s easy in Washington to make almost any issue political, including tax policy.  However, there is a clear difference in asking legitimate, tough questions in a political atmosphere versus asking politically charged questions under the guise of legitimacy.  Unfortunately we are about to see more of the latter from Michigan Senator Carl Levin when the former is what’s needed. Tomorrow, [...]

When it comes to identifying policymakers who will champion bipartisan, constructive approaches to fix our outdated, broken tax system and help U.S. companies to innovate, compete and create jobs, don’t count Senator Carl Levin among them. For several years, Senator Levin has used his position as Chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to conduct a campaign to embarrass American companies [...]

Under a beautiful blue sky in the Rose Garden this morning, President Obama laid out the three key questions that drove the priorities in his just-released Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 budget: “How do we make America a magnet for new jobs?  How do we give our workers the skills they need to do those jobs?  And how do we make sure that hard work leads to a decent living?” Some of the key initiatives put forward [...]

In a report that would have made Casablanca’s Captain Renault blush, this morning’s Marketplace Morning Report discovered the “shocking” news that U.S.-headquartered multinational companies keep their foreign earnings in foreign markets, and by doing so, they are able to defer any U.S. taxes on those earnings until it is invested in the U.S.  This isn’t new -- tax deferral been a feature of U.S. tax [...]

The President’s nominee to be the next U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Jack Lew, testified at the Senate Finance Committee today and faced questions from Democratic and Republican Senators on the importance of corporate tax reform to job creation.  (You can watch the archived hearing on the committee’s site.) Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., set the tone with his opening statement, underscoring that the [...]

As they analyze the two speeches tonight – the President’s State of the Union Address and Senator Marco Rubio’s Republican response, pundits are focused on the evening's political theater.  Who applauded when?  Was the tone fair or fractious?  But those questions ignore the ones that are most important:  What are the areas of agreement?  And how do we get them done? When there is bipartisan agreement, [...]

There are critical choices facing Congress as members work to find solutions to the urgent fiscal challenges facing the nation.  But, as they work toward answers, they should not sacrifice the foundation of America’s innovation economy – science, R&D, and education.  And when it comes to “raising revenues” – Washington-ese for higher taxes – Congress needs to adopt a competitive, market-based approach [...]