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5 67th National Conference and Annual Dinner [i] (2004)

handle is hein.taxfoundation/taxfaabb0005 and id is 1 raw text is: Remarks of Chairman Bill Thomas U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee Tax Foundation 67h Annual Conference Global Tax Reform: Who's Leading, Who's Lagging, and is the U.S. in the Race? November 18, 2004 CHAIRMAN BILL THOMAS, WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE: Thank you very much. That's a very nice introduction. However, you might have mentioned that while I was waiting for each tax bill, we did Medicare, trade legislation... SCOTT HODGE, TAX FOUNDATION: We didn't have that much time. THOMAS: I see. I can't figure out what it is based upon the title of what I'm supposed to talk about. If, in fact, it was Global Tax Reform: Who's Leading? Who's Lagging? Is the U.S. in the Race? What's the yardstick that you want to use to measure that? And if it isn't apparently clear to you when I finish what I'm saying about your title - that I'm not talking about the process that we're gonna be going through - I'll tell you at the beginning that what I'm talking about is the process that we're gonna have to go through. Because if you say who's leading or who's lagging, what's the yardstick? Are you going to say who taxes more or less? And if you look at various segments of taxation or do you look at overall taxes in terms of GDP? I mean the U.S. is leading under some yard sticks; it's not under others. So clearly what you have to do is prioritize what yardstick you want to use versus other yardsticks. Who has the higher or lower rate? Is it corporate? Is it single taxation? Is it where you have two different tax systems? Which in part produce a higher GDP tax structure. Again I can go through as long as you can. Broader base? Narrower base? What are the yardsticks? And everybody is talking about entering into a process of fundamental tax reform. What's fundamental? If you leap 25ft in one jump, is that fundamental? Or if you take 25 one foot steps and get to exactly the same place, that's incremental? I don't know. So I'm supposed to come up here and talk to you about Global Tax Reform: Who's Leading? Who's Lagging? Is the U.S. in the Race? The only way I can probably answer that is if we weren't leading before, we have marginally put ourselves in a slightly better position today then yesterday. But depending upon where and how you want to emphasize it, we either have taken one of those 25 steps, or if you know anything about the long jump, we've crow-hopped. Because we didn't do the kind of things, in terms of moving towards a structure, that's more compatible with what other people are doing, i.e.

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