Rubio, who was a featured speaker at the Tax Day Tea Party rally in Orlando, Florida, spoke with ThinkProgress prior to his speech. Given the event’s focus on taxes, we asked Rubio if he was concerned about corporations like GE that pay nothing in corporate income taxes.
Rubio declined to defend corporate tax dodgers, as many of his Republican colleagueshave done. Instead, the junior senator from Florida agreed that “of course” corporations weren’t paying their fair share, saying “that’s the problem.” Rubio also conceded that corporations are only able to avoid paying taxes because they can “afford to hire lobbyists to change the tax code or lawyers to figure it out.” The Florida Republican then went on to agree that he would like to see Congress do more to close these tax loopholes that corporations currently take advantage of:
KEYES: Here on tax day, a lot of folks are really concerned about the level of taxation in the country, but we’ve seen in the news recently, GE for instance, paying nothing in corporate income tax. Are you worried about corporations paying their fair share?
RUBIO: Of course. That’s the problem. Here’s the problem. Big corporations and big companies, they’ve got the best accounts and lawyers in the world, they’ll always figure out a way to pay the least amount possible. The people who get killed through high tax rates are the little guys and the small businesses and the mid-size businesses. They can’t afford to hire lobbyists to change the tax code or lawyers to figure it out. [...]
KEYES: Would you like to see Congress do more to close these tax loopholes that businesses are taking advantage of?
RUBIO: Yes. That’s why I’d like to see the tax rate flattened and made uniform. So that’s one of the things we’ve always talked about is tax reform. Otherwise you’re creating a disadvantage. The big companies will always have an advantage over small business.
Watch it:
No comments:
Post a Comment