David Jackson, USA TODAY
President Obama urged Congress on Thursday to crack down on U.S. companies that transfer their addresses to foreign entities in order to avoid paying American corporate taxes.
Keeping that tax revenue in the United States could help finance programs devoted to items like education and job training, Obama told supporters at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College.
“I’m not interested in punishing these companies,” Obama said. “But I am interested in economic patriotism.”
Protesting a practice known as “inversion,” Obama said that too many companies are merging with foreign entities and using the latter for their home addresses, thereby avoiding U.S. corporate taxes.
Obama’s speech wrapped up a three-day trip to the west coast that included a series of Democratic campaign fundraisers.
Republicans said the U.S. corporate tax rate is too high, and the solution is an overhaul of the entire tax system that would reduce those rates.
Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said that “until the White House endorses our tax reform plan or convinces Senate Democrats to act, every pink slip from companies moving overseas may as well be signed, ‘President Barack H. Obama.'”
During his remarks in Los Angeles, Obama said he also supports tax reform, but Congress can act more quickly to close “this unpatriotic tax loophole for good.”
Said Obama: “I don’t care if it’s legal — it’s wrong.”
