Good-government groups weigh in on repatriation

The groups are inserting themselves into what has become a months-long back-and-forth over whether the U.S. should repeat a 2004 policy that allowed corporations to bring offshore profits to the country at a drastically reduced tax rate.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate have introduced bills that would allow companies to get their tax bill on offshore profits down to 5.25 percent – the same rate as in the 2004 holiday and an 85 percent discount from the current top corporate rate of 35 percent.

A corporate coalition that includes top Silicon Valley outfits like Cisco and Oracle is pushing hard for another holiday, saying it’s one of the few ideas to inject money into the U.S. economy that has bipartisan support. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the New America Foundation are among the groups also backing a holiday.

{mosads}But the proposal has not really caught on with the Obama administration or the leaders of the congressional tax-writing committees, who appear to be more focused on broader reform. Groups on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum, like the Heritage Foundation and Citizens for Tax Justice, oppose the idea as well.

For its part, the 15 groups writing lawmakers on Thursday, like some other repatriation critics, connected the proposal to the current Occupy Wall Street protests.

“Yet even after one of the greatest financial disasters since the Great Depression, it seems Congress isn’t done serving corporate interests,” the organizations wrote. “When will Congress press as hard to protect the rest of us?”