Gary Cohn Really, Really Wants to Cut Corporate Taxes

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Gary Cohn is eager to be part of the upcoming tax cut team:

Gary Cohn gives quite a non-answer when asked if he is only staying at the White House to get tax reform done (on Fox Business): pic.twitter.com/u9HzWTtxkP

— David Wright (@DavidWright_CNN) September 1, 2017

Poor Cohn. He’s getting flak for claiming there’s been no tax cut for 31 years. What he obviously meant to say was that the last big corporate tax reform was 31 years ago, which is true. The problem is that it’s not clear that either Cohn or Congress is really working on a big corporate tax reform right now. As Cohn says, they’re working on a tax cut. The tax reform of 1986 did cut the tax rate, but it also widened the base and was basically revenue-neutral.

So how long has it been since a big corporate tax cut? Pretty much forever. There’s never been one. Various small changes over time, combined with corporations getting more efficient at tax avoidance, have reduced effective tax rates, but that’s it. So Cohn really has a chance to make history. If he oversees a big corporate tax cut that’s not revenue neutral, he’ll be the first person in history to do it. That’s surely something a man can be proud of. After all, lower corporate tax rates are a surefire way to boost economic growth. Right?