The most absurd corporate tax giveaway of last year

The $104 Billion Refund
The most absurd corporate tax giveaway of 2005.because instead of paying the normal corporate tax rate of 35 percent on $9.5 billion in profits it earned overseas, the company paid only 5.25 percent. That's the magic of the American Jobs Creation Act, a piece of legislation that passed with comfortable margins in both the House and the Senate and was signed into law by President Bush just two weeks before the 2004 elections.

The AJCA, which was pushed through during the last fit of panic about outsourcing, was ostensibly designed to encourage companies to add jobs here. It gave a small tax deduction to American manufacturers, and it offered a one-time tax holiday in 2005 when corporations could repatriate their foreign income at a massively reduced tax rate. This repatriation, the theory went, would encourage R & D and capital investment in the United States, leading to new positions down the road. But, like President Bush's creatively named Clear Skies initiative and Healthy Forest Restoration Act, the American Jobs Creation Act has not lived up to its title."It basically gave money to corporations in return for corporate contributions," says Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice. As for the law's name, McIntyre says that Congress was "just kidding." One of the few groups that believes the legislation has led to the creation of jobs is the American Shareholders Association, a spinoff of Americans for Tax Reform, led by conservative activist Grover Norquist. In a report last month, the American Shareholders Association said that stock buybacks, dividends and mergers, and acquisitions were up sharply because of the legislation and that this in turn had led to the creation of 500,000 high-paying jobs in the United States.

Not so far. Some companies taking advantage of the generous tax break haven't even tried to hide their layoffs. In January 2005, on the same day it announced it was cutting 6 percent of its workforce, National Semiconductor said that it was repatriating $500 million under the American Jobs Creation Act. Colgate-Palmolive, which in December 2004 announced plans to cut more than 4,000 jobs, brought back $800 million in overseas profits last year. The Wall Street Journal reported in December that the combination of repatriation and job cuts prompted Amalgamated Bank, which owns Colgate shares, to file a shareholder resolution arguing that the company's brand and reputation would be damaged by such moves. Julie Gozan, director of corporate governance for Amalgamated, said the resolution was withdrawn before Colgate filed its proxy on March 31 because the company agreed to provide more information to investors on the impact of the AJCA later this year. But Gozan said that Amalgamated is considering similar resolutions at several other companies where it owns stock.

In addition to lowering the tax rate, the AJCA required companies to rewrite all sorts of employment contracts. Mike Melbinger, head of executive compensation and employee benefits at Winston and Strawn, a large Chicago-based law firm, estimated that the typical large company might have 30 employment contracts, 10 change-in-control agreements, and various severance plans, all of which had to be changed as a result of the 2004 law. "It was a ton of work," says Melbinger. "As much as we like to get paid, it was terrible for the clients."

So at least the American Jobs Creation Act benefited one group of American workers: corporate lawyers.