What New Tax Breaks?
Another key omission in the CTJ study is its failure to name any tax law changes, which it blames for lowering companies’ tax rates. The report states that “President Bush signed new business tax breaks totaling $175 billion over the 2002–04 period.”[23] Presumably, the CTJ report refers to the Job Creation and Worker Assistance Act of 2002 (JCWAA), which was signed on March 7, 2002. The report does not name any legislation, but the JCWAA addressed two of the tax provisions discussed in the CTJ paper. The JCWAA altered the tax treatment of accelerated depreciation and of net operating losses, two provisions criticized in the paper as new tax breaks. However, accelerated depreciation and NOL tax deductions have existed for many years. The JCWAA affected the timing—not the magnitude—of these tax deductions. The CTJ report also lists employee stock options, tax credits, offshore sheltering, and the failure of the corporate alternative minimum tax as reasons that corporations are payi
