Do U.S. Corporate Tax Rates Send Jobs Offshore?

David J. Lynch of USA Today in March of 2008 mentioned the following:

• “multinational corporations can defer paying U.S. taxes on their overseas profits until they return them to the USA – transfers that often don’t happen for years. General Electric, for example, has $62 billion in “undistributed earnings” parked offshore, according to recent Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Drug giant Pfizer boasts $60 billion. ExxonMobil has $56 billion.”
• “Obama also has co-sponsored legislation that would give “Patriot Employers” a tax credit equal to 1% of their taxable income if they maintain or increase the ratio of their U.S. workforce to the number of workers abroad, keep their headquarters in the USA and meet other wage, health care and pension requirements.”
• “From 2000 through 2005, U.S. multinationals eliminated 2.1 million jobs at home while adding 784,000 to their payrolls abroad, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. At the end of 2005, the most recent statistics available, U.S. corporations employed almost 9 million people outside the United States.”
• “In 2004, Slaughter [Matthew Slaughter, a Dartmouth College economics professor who worked in the Bush administration] released a study, based on employment data for the decade ending in 2001, which concluded that U.S. multinationals created two jobs in the USA for every job they added abroad.”

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