Editor's note: This column also appears in today's Detroit News.)
If I wasn’t a nice guy, I might think it would be fun to have Senator Carl Levin’s job.
You sit up on raised podium, act high and mighty, wave your arms, look down your nose at people (which is why your glasses are way down there) and excoriate them. Michigan’s senior seantor has several favorite types of targets – including banking executives, defense contractors and people who do what’s necessary to protect America’s national security – but he’s not picky. And he especially loves to beat up on American corporations who commit the sin of making money – and the far worse sin of not turning over as much of it to the federal government as Carl Levin wants.
Levin’s latest crusade of outrage has targeted Apple, which apparently has very good accountants and has figured out how to minimize its tax liability by deftly gaming the complicated system designed by people like Carl Levin.
This will not do according to Mr. Levin, who conducted an “investigation” that consisted of accessing publicly available tax returns you and I could get simply by asking, and then publicly denounced Apple for “gimmickry” and “alchemy.” So what did Levin discover through his “investigation”? He discovered that Apple is smart, and recognized it could pay much less in taxes by setting up operations in Ireland, which has a corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent (ours is 35 percent, thanks to people like Carl Levin), and what’s more, Ireland even makes it possible to avoid paying the corporate tax at all on much of your income – if you do smart things like Apple did.
So Levin is not only upset that Apple didn’t pay more taxes in the U.S., he is also upset that Apple didn’t pay more taxes to Ireland. I did not know it was the job of a U.S. senator to encourage U.S. dollars going overseas, but this is Carl Levin, and his job is mainly just to rant and rave any time a corporation experiences success.
Since Levin is retiring from the Senate next year, here’s an idea: Maybe he could open a store. It could sell, I don’t know, let’s say . . . combs. It could be called Carl’s Comb Over. Levin can open his comb store down the street from another comb store that sells combs for $1.25 apiece. But Levin can sell his combs for $4 apiece. Then, whenever someone buys the $1.25 combs down the street instead of the $4 combs at Carl’s Comb Over, Levin can rant and rave and demand an investigation. He can accuse the dastardly corporate combists of alchemy and gimmickry, then have his friend Harry Reid pass a special tax on anyone who doesn’t pay their fair share for care of their hair.
I suspect Levin’s store would soon find itself in about the same fiscal condition as the federal government (although, to be fair, quite possibly a little better than the City of Detroit). It’s rough when people act rationally, especially when their rational actions spare them the burden you were trying to impose on them. But at least, as a U.S. senator, Carl Levin has a platform to express his outrageously outraged outrage about it.
Imagine the celebration the American business community will throw when this guy finally retires. Too bad Michigan voters made them wait so many years for it.
