In the last 10 years, an estimated 2.4 million jobs have been shipped off shore by U.S. companies, according to U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), and he says the tax code not only allows it, but encourages it.
“It’s almost as if the tax code says ‘take your jobs overseas and the code will help you do it,” said Casey. “Unfortunately I’m not exaggerating.”
For that reason Casey is calling on the Senate Committee on Finance to move the Bring Jobs Home Act (S. 337) to the full Senate for debate and a vote.
Currently the tax code allows companies to deduct costs associated with moving operations — including moves that take jobs overseas. That deduction would be eliminated by the act, but “the bill would continue to allow companies to deduct the cost of brining jobs back to the U.S. reversing the incentives rather than rewarding bad behavior,” Casey said.
The act would also add into the code a 20 percent tax credit for costs associated with what Casey calls “reshoring” jobs.
The legislation was sent to committee in February of this year and has not been touched since. Casey hopes this will be just one step in “comprehensive tax reform,” and he believes the bill would have a direct impact on Pennsylvania.
“With lower energy costs and a strong industrial base we have the potential to attract some of this reshoring,” Casey said.
Using federal Trade Adjustment Assistance requests the senator’s office estimates 6,571 jobs left Pennsylvania for foreign soil last year. Of those, 139 of them came from Allegheny County, 104 from Cambria County and 225 from Westmorland County.
