Edward Kleinbard, a USC law professor, had some thoughts on tax inversions, the process whereby a domestic company merges into a foreign company and moves its headquarters to that foreign company’s domicile in order to avoid high domestic taxes. The subject has come up in the last few weeks in the context of US companies doing the inversions. Dr Kleinbard, though, is proceeding from some false premises.

He argues, for instance,

Firms that invert argue that the deals are…harmless to US tax-revenue collection, and a necessary response to our anticompetitive world-wide corporate tax system. [“Harmless” is] demonstrably false…..

If allowed to continue, inversions will eviscerate the US domestic corporate tax base, because making a foreign company the parent of a US firm opens up new tax-avoidance possibilities.

The false premise is this. It isn’t the government’s money; it’s the money of the corporation’s owners. It simply isn’t possible for the government to be harmed by not receiving that which doesn’t belong to it.

Moreover, there shouldn’t be a “US domestic corporate tax base” in the first place. The corporation really doesn’t pay much of those taxes; the corporation’s customers do in the form of higher prices—which ultimately makes the American citizens doubly taxed.

Another of Kleinbard’s false premises is this:

Corporate tax reform will not be able to undo the damage done to the US tax base.

Part of this second error is simply a restatement of the first: no damage can be done to the government’s tax base by not receiving that which doesn’t belong to the government.

The larger question here, though, is the predicted failure of corporate tax reform. With American corporate tax rates lower than anywhere else in the world (their complete removal, say I) the US will be far more attractive to all companies, foreign and domestic. Including to those inverted companies, still inverted, or with the inversions undone as the more attractive alternative for the putative new senior partner company.

Besides, in the end, as always, the government doesn’t need the money; it needs to reduce spending.

In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Senator Ron Wyden (D, OR), Senate Finance Committee Chairman, labored under the same false premise as the international collaboration effort.

While decrying the loss of US companies as they move overseas to avoid the US’ highest in the world corporate tax rate, he insisted

America’s tax base erodes at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, increasing the burden on other companies and individuals. America also loses good jobs, talent, investment, and the ability to compete on a global stage.

Legal or not, this loophole must be plugged.

Once again: it isn’t possible for government to incur a “cost of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue” when it isn’t government’s…revenue…in the first place. Certainly, government sees a reduction of “millions of dollars” from these moves, if we elide—as Wyden does—the dynamic effects of real tax reform.

However, the right answer isn’t Wyden’s, who demanded

Current law requires that US companies reincorporating overseas must ensure that at least 20% of their stock is owned by their new, foreign partner. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, I am committed to raising this floor to at least 50% for all inversions taking place from May 8, 2014, on.

This move is—how shall I put this delicately—brain-dead. Just as companies have found and are finding legal ways around existing tax law, and by the way, leaving profits earned overseas overseas due to our usurious corporate tax rates, they’ll find ways around Wyden’s 50% threshold, too. All Wyden will get out of this is feel-good and frustration, if he’s sincere in his effort, and open-ended political gain from his base if he’s not.

Wyden will not get anything material done regarding his concern for “increasing the burden on other companies and individuals.” Nor will he accomplish anything meaningful for his loss of “good jobs, talent, investment, and the ability to compete on a global stage.”

No, what’s needed is what is the first step in any recovery program: recognize and acknowledge that he has a problem. His notion that taxes are government’s money has to go, to be replaced by recognition that it’s our money, granted to government only for purposes that suit us, not that suit government.

The next step is to lower US corporate tax rates (eliminate corporate taxes altogether, say I, but a sharp reduction is a good early step), and then to make it easier (not harder) to partner with overseas companies (including in those companies’ taxing jurisdictions) and cheaper (free would be good) to repatriate profits earned overseas to the US.

Wyden thought he was addressing tax rates, too, in his op-ed.

A [lower] corporate tax rate that creates a favorable investment climate and reduces the incentive to game the system is critical to successful reform. … Where the rate ends up depends almost entirely on the American business community’s willingness to pitch in by closing loopholes.

There’s that false assumption that it’s the government’s money, again. This time it leads to the false conclusion that tax reform must, somehow, be revenue neutral. That may be useful politically, but it’s useless to true tax reform. There’s no need to “close loopholes” in return for lower tax rates. Loopholes need to be closed, certainly, but in order to reduce government social engineering through our tax code, not in order to preserve revenue that isn’t government’s to begin with. Of course, eliminating corporate taxes altogether would close all those loopholes….

Wyden wants global competition? Let other nations compete with us, beginning with lowering their business tax rates in their resulting newfound need to keep their companies from relocating to the US. With foreign talent coming here, while ours stays here. For good jobs in the US, for investment in the US.

Oh, and the lower tax rates also will decrease “the burden on other companies and individuals.”

There’s competition. It can come only from correcting that premise, though.

The US is about to join an international tax collaboration scheme involving the People’s Republic of China, Australia, Japan, and Great Britain that’s designed to improve tax collections from multinational corporations. It’s also designed to increase government reach into private enterprises and government control over them.

Leave those last two design purposes aside, though.

Australia’s Commissioner of Taxation, Chris Jordan, said this about the scheme:

This collaboration has allowed us to better understand what is happening in our own countries and determine whether what is being represented in one country reflects what is being represented in another.

Fair enough. Nations of laws, as most of these participating nations are, should be able to enforce their tax laws, also, and the taxees ought not be telling conflicting stories to differing jurisdictions.

The Wall Street Journal at the above link cited “some estimates” as claiming that “the world’s governments lose US$3 trillion in tax revenue a year” to multinationals’ moves to adjust their own revenue collections to the most favorable tax jurisdictions.

And therein lies the false premise. In free countries—the US, Great Britain, Australia, and Japan in the present context—it’s not the government’s money; it’s the tax payers’ money, and they only allocate some of their money to their respective governments as tax payments. The governments aren’t losing a dime to legal tax payment minimization or avoidance schemes. It isn’t possible for them to lose what isn’t theirs in the first place.