Smith Business Close-Up: Debating the Corporate Tax Structure

September 27, 2012 & September 30, 2012

According to data published earlier this year, 70 U.S. companies hold $1.2 trillion in untaxed (by the United States) profits around the world, an 18-percent increase from a year earlier. Those firms and others unsuccessfully lobbied Congress in 2011 for a tax repatriation holiday — similar to the one enacted seven years ago within the 2004 American Jobs Creation Act. Though legislative debate on a tax holiday has stalled, the presidential candidates differ on how to deal with a 35 percent U.S. corporate tax rate — highest among industrialized nations and an obstacle to increasing American jobs and production on U.S. soil.

In this edition of Smith Business Close-Up with the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Michael Faulkender talks about the debate over the corporate tax structure.

Faulkender is an associate professor of finance. He co-authored “Investment and Capital Constraints: Repatriations Under the American Jobs Creation Act” in the journal Review of Financial Studies (forthcoming). Faulkender’s research focuses on empirical corporate finance, primarily in the areas of capital structure, risk management, corporate liquidity, and executive compensation.