Press: 2015
The Los Angeles Times (December 30, 2015)
Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez featured Edward Kleinbard and his book “We Are Better Than This.” In the column on income inequality, Lopez quoted Kleinbard: “We are the richest economy in the world, but an extraordinary number of Americans live in poverty. We are the most unequal society of all large peer economies, and even more shocking, we are nowhere near the top in income mobility — the ability to climb from poor to rich or to slide down the opposite side of that hill.” Lopez also mentioned that Kleinbard was on a panel with him at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC.
The Huffington Post (December 29, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was cited from his book “We Are Better Than This” in a blog post about public versus private financing in health care. Kleinbard wrote that because the federal government spends about $1 trillion per year on the health of Americans, it subsidizes virtually everyone with health insurance of any kind, including those who believe they have entirely private employer-sponsored health insurance.
The Los Angeles Times (December 4, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about corporate tax avoidance. “The right solution is worldwide tax consolidation at a fair rate,” Kleibard said, which would prevent corporations from playing one country’s tax regime off against another’s. The reform could reduce the U.S. corporate tax rate, Kleinbard said, but it would result in cleaner, fairer and more productive taxes.
The Washington Post (November 23, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about a merger between Pfizer and Allergan that has created one of the world’s largest drugmakers. The deal reignited a debate over corporate tax inversion strategies that experts say have diverted billions in tax revenue from U.S. coffers. “Treasury is trying to hold back the tide with a broom, but that is an unfair position into which to put Treasury. The U.S. Congress owns the tax code,” Kleinbard said. “What is going on here is a dereliction of duty by Congress, and Treasury is doing the best it can in an impossible situation.”
Reuters (November 16, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about Pfizer’s use of corporate tax inversions. He said the company’s arrangements reflected “agressive tax planning.” “This is a company that is investing heavily in tax research, as well as pharmaceutical research,” he joked.
The Los Angeles Times (November 16, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about Pfizer’s corporate tax inversions. Kleinbard suggested a two-year moratorium on all inversions “to reduce the hemorrhaging” should Congress and the White House finally make a permanent deal on corporate taxes. He argued that elements of a new corporate tax structure are clear on both sides of the partisan aisle. “The scope of disagreement between [House Speaker Paul] Ryan and President Obama is so small that they could work out the bullet points in the course of a weekend,” he said.
The Washington Post (November 16, 2015)
The Washington Post quoted Edward Kleinbard about Bernie Sanders’ tax proposals and cited a letter signed by him and other tax law experts about corporate profits being at an all-time high while U.S. taxes are at an all-time low. Kleinbard said closing the corporate tax loophole on foreign earnings could generate enough revenue to cover Sanders’ ambitious infrastructure spending plan. “You might well conclude that it would be perfectly plausible to imagine picking up $500 to $600 billion in actual revenue in the first 5 years alone, so easily over $1 trillion over 10 — not counting the backward looking tax on existing earnings,” Kleinbard said.
The New York Times (November 14, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about Pfizer’s use of corporate tax inversions after the announcement of a deal that could move the company’s legal tax headquarters from New York to Dublin. “I’m hoping that Congress imposes a two-year timeout on tax inversions,” he said. “If Congress doesn’t act, tax inversions will be very appealing for many American corporations.”
The Wall Street Journal (November 8, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about Pfizer’s international tax strategies, which appear to raise its effective tax rate. Very few companies report foreign earning the way Pfizer does, in part because it lowers their reported earnings. “Even if the accountants beat Pfizer up, which I say with a wink, it remains the case that it’s still an entirely artificial charge in that it will never ripen into an actual cash tax bill until Pfizer actually moves the cash,” Kleinbard said.
The Los Angeles Times (October 29, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about the tax incentives of Pfizer buying Ireland-based Allergan. “Lots of people have assumed this will be an inversion transaction, but neither party has confirmed,” Kleinbard said.
Fortune (October 22, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about Uber’s tax strategies. Kleinbard said that the strategies the company employs in creating a network of foreign subsidiaries to minimize taxes are legal and similar to those used by bigger tech names such as Apple, Google and Facebook. “Silicon Valley is a small place,” Kleinbard said. “Just as there is a vibrant atmosphere for tech innovation, there is a vibrant climate for sharing tax innovation.”
The Huffington Post (October 21, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard wrote an op-ed about a federal debt ceiling crisis that could be triggered in early November if what he called a “rudderless, riven and ineffective Congress” does not take action. “If triggered, a debt ceiling crisis would be a constitutional and fiscal nightmare of the first order,” Kleinbard wrote. “From the time of Alexander Hamilton to today, this country has never dishonored its debts and other financial obligations, but that is exactly what a debt ceiling crisis would entail.”
KPFK-FM (October 19, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was interviewed on “Background Briefing with Ian Masters” about an impending debt ceiling crisis for the United States. “We have never in the 226-year history of the Republic, have never had an occasion on which the government of the United States has stood up and systematically dishonored its financial obligations,” Kleinbard said. “That’s what a debt ceiling crisis is saying, it’s saying we will not pay our financial obligations, and that includes all forms of financial obligations, not just Tresury bonds, not just Social Security payments, but everything from rent to a landlord who’s leasing property to the U.S. government, to military salaries for our men and women in service and salaries for every federal employee — every financial disbursement by the government of the United States would in a sense now be called into question because the Treasury Department would not have the resources — would not be permitted by Congress — to borrow the funds necessary to pay those bills.”
TaxProf Blog (September 29, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was mentioned for signing an open letter to members of Congress to “raise significant concerns about legislative proposals that would seek to close a six-year funding shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund by taxing $2.1 trillion in U.S. corporate offshore profits at a significant discount that would overhaul the way U.S. corporations would be taxed on their future offshore profits.”
The New York Times (September 29, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about Donald Trump’s tax proposal. Trump’s plan is not completely illogical, but then again, “a broken clock is right twice a day,” Kleinbard said. He added that he likes Trump’s proposal to tax companies’ foreign earnings at the time they are earned, just like domestic profits.
Sinclair Broadcast Group (September 28, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about Donald Trump’s tax proposal. “It’s very clear the highest income Americans will come out ahead of this plan, and it’s not at all clear what — if anything — this plan will do for lower-income Americans,” Kleinbard said. “It’s designed to catch eyes but doesn’t give enough detail. If you want to take credit for being substantive, then you’ve got to be substantive.”
NPR (September 28, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about tax plans proposed by Republican presidential candidates, including attempting to simplify the tax code by reducing the number of different brackets. “The number of brackets has an almost imperceptible effect on the complexity of tax law as it is lived by the individual taxpayer,” Kleinbard said. “Taxpayers are not, left to their own devices, engaged in high-level mathematics.”
TIME (September 28, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about Donald Trump’s proposal to allow corporations to bring earnings back to the U.S. from overseas while paying lower rates on them, presumably with the requirement that the money be spent creating jobs. “Money is fungible, and it’s very easy for multinational companies to find ways around these rules,” Kleinbard said.
Financial Times (September 1, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about Etsy transferring some intellectual property assets to an Irish subsidiary. He said such transfers of intellectual property to Ireland by multinationals “in general are motivated entirely by tax reduction agendas…Etsy has a special concern that it is a B Corp designed to advertise to the world that is has morals that are ‘higher than the marketplace’,” Kleinbard added. “So to argue that it is compliant with marketplace standards does not seem to me to be really responsive to the higher standards it holds for itself.”
CNN Money (August 20, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about Hillary Clinton’s proposal to promote long-term investing through changes in the tax code. “Hillary’s plan is complicated and doesn’t serve any purpose,” Kleinbard said.
Yahoo News (August 14, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about speculation that Google’s newly created holding company, Alphabet, was created for special tax purposes. “I don’t get what they’re hinting at,” Kleinbard said. “The company is still (based in the) U.S., and foreign earnings remain subject to all the same rules.”
Ars Technica (July 1, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was cited about Chicago’s new tax on online services, including Netflix and other online providers of movies, music and games. Kleinbard said he had never heard of such a tax anywhere else in the United States.
The New York Times (May 28, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted in a story about a recent I.R.S. data breach used by criminals to file fraudulent tax returns. “The I.R.S. takes data, privacy and data security extremely seriously,” he said. “They do their best, but the resources arrayed against it have become increasingly well-funded and sophisticated, and the problems will only compound over time.”
Enterprising Investor (May 28, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard’s book “We Are Better Than This: How Government Should Spend Our Money” was reviewed as “a useful guide to the structure and effects of the US fiscal machine.”
KNUS-AM (May 27, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was interviewed about his book “We Are Better Than This,” which argues that perceptions about taxation are framed inaccurately. “A lot of the disagreement today is based on incorrect understanding of the facts, not simply by members of Congress, but by all of us,” Kleinbard said.
Yahoo Finance (May 26, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about a decision by Amazon to stop funneling its European sales through a Luxembourg-based entity to minimize its tax bill. The move is part of Amazon’s “corporate maturation process,” he said. “It is acknowledging that its tax model has to catch up with its actual business model.”
The Sacramento Bee (May 20, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was cited in an article about California’s tax system for his ideas about rethinking the tax code to invest in key means of upward mobility, such as infrastructure and public higher education.
C-SPAN Book TV (May 17, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was interviewed about his book, “We Are Better Than This,” on C-SPAN’s Book TV. He said that one of the themes of the book is figuring out the right size of government. “The book argues strenuously that, in fact, government investment and insurance have big payoffs. Not just touchy-feely payoffs, but big economic payoffs. We’re starving ourselves as a country by not making the kinds of investments only government can make, by not offering the kind of insurance that government is ideally situated to make. And so when we argue about taxes, we’re putting the cart before the horse,” he said.
The Huffington Post (May 1, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard’s book “We Are Better Than This: How Government Should Spend Our Money” was referenced in a column written by Jim Burklo of the USC Dornsife College about the intersection of religion and economics — and how both can be used to better society. “We can afford to be better citizens to one another,” Kleinbard wrote. “When will we honor Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson? When will we choose to govern ourselves in ways that are most likely to effect the happiness of our whole society?”
The Los Angeles Times (April 28, 2015)
A column by Steve Lopez about the relationship between income inequality and the Baltimore riots featured a quote from Edward Kleinbard’s book “We Are Better Than This: How the Government SHOULD Spend Our Money.” “The United States has the highest poverty rate, the greatest income inequality, and the greatest wealth inequality of any major developed economy in the world,” Kleinbard wrote.
The Washington Post (April 27, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about overcompensation of corporate executives. “I do think that a lot of the overpayment comes from the fact that notwithstanding the more diverse economy, the more diverse business community, still in the end, it’s a club at the top,” he said.
The Washington Examiner (April 24, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about corporate income tax reform to lower tax rates for many small businesses, which would have to become corporations to take advantage of the lower rate. “The ultimate goal, for a host of policy and administrative reasons, should be to encourage (but not compel) all but micro-businesses to incorporate, so that all significant businesses face the same basic tax system,” he said.
Las Vegas Review-Journal (April 20, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard’s remarks were highlighted in a story about a sold-out discussion at the Festival of Books on income inequality. Attended by 700 people and moderated by Los Angeles columnist, Steve Lopez, Kleinbard served on the panel with Rolling Stone contributor Matt Taibbi and Harvard professor Robert Putnam at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Kleinbard said there are ways to close the wealth and opportunity gap. “It is as politically feasible as we choose to make it,” Kleinbard said. He argued that the government has a role in enabling upward mobility, but it needs to increase spending incrementally to do so.
The Los Angeles Times (April 19, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard served on a panel – attended by more than 700 people – at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books about income inequality. Moderated by LA Times columnist, Steve Lopez, Kleinbard was on the panel with Rolling Stone contributor Matt Taibbi and Harvard professor Robert Putnam. Kleinbard said we need a smarter government to restore our social safety net and end what he called a “shameful inequality.” Preparing to write the book, Kleinbard recalled encountering what passed as policy analysis, the pseudo economics, and the narcissistic work of writers he called “market triumphalists,” who mainly desired to keep what was theirs.
The Los Angeles Times (April 18, 2015)
A column by Steve Lopez that highlighted low-paid workers and their struggle for income mobility featured a passage from Edward Kleinbard’s book “We Are Better Than This: How the Government SHOULD Spend Our Money.” “We are the richest economy in the world,” Kleinbard wrote, “but an extraordinary number of Americans live in poverty. We are the most unequal society of all large peer economies, and even more shocking, we are nowhere near the top in income mobility — the ability to climb from poor to rich (or to slide down the opposite side of that hill).”
New York Times (April 14, 2015)
An op-ed by Edward Kleinbard was published on how affluent Americans are able to avoid capital gains taxes from everywhere in the world by moving to Puerto Rico for 183 days of the year. “With great wealth comes great capital gains evasion opportunity,” he wrote.
The Washington Post (April 13, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about how referring to the Internal Revenue Code, which is enacted by Congress and administered by the Internal Revenue Service, as the “IRS code” colors public perception of the tax code. “The effort is hugely successful. People don’t blame Congress for the tax law they hate. They blame the IRS,” Kleinbard said. “Like ‘death tax,’ it has, I think, unquestionably colored public perception of who owns the Internal Revenue Code.”
The New York Times (April 10, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about General Electric’s decision to take a $6 billion tax hit by repatriating about $36 billion in foreign earnings back to the U.S. “This reflects both their existential despair over seeing tax reform any time soon, and the increasing implausibility of their claims that in fact their offshore earnings will in fact ever be put to work in new foreign investments,” he said.
U-T San Diego (March 30, 2015)
An op-ed written by Edward Kleinbard and colleagues about income inequality and the modern tax code was cited in an article about proposed California state tax reform. ““California has long been known as the land of opportunity, the republic of the future,” he wrote. “Inequality continues to rise – even though California has one of the most progressive tax structures in the nation. Something more is needed.”
The Los Angeles Times (March 21, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was cited about how real estate plays into wealth inequality.
The New York Times (March 17, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was cited about building more effective government through tax reform.
Bloomberg View (March 1, 2015)
An op-ed was run by Edward Kleinbard about the potential for 2015 being a big year for corporate tax reform. “Offering bargain corporate-tax rates to induce small- and medium-sized companies to accept tax reform might seem distasteful to some, but it’s a good deal for America,” Kleinbard wrote.
Forbes (February 28, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was cited on why people should be optimistic about the possibility of corporate tax reform. “A rough framework is emerging that could stun pundits by actually becoming the basis of corporate tax reform legislation,” he said in a recent essay.
Minnesota Public Radio (February 26, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was interviewed about the politics of tax reform. “I think it is real this time but its real in a more limited way than what people may want to hear. Where there is real momentum and real possibility is in respect to corporate tax reform,” he said.
The Washington Post (February 17, 2015)
An essay by Edward Kleinbard was cited about corporate tax reform legislation.
NPR (February 15, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was interviewed about President Obama’s proposals to curb corporate tax avoidance strategies. “These kinds of games are exactly the reason why you need the minimum tax. The minimum tax is the safeguard against these kinds of abuses,” he said.
Quartz (February 14, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about regulations that can prevent companies from pursuing tax avoidance strategies. “It doesn’t matter what happens to US tax reform, US multinationals are going to pay a great deal more in tax on their foreign income on the future than they pay today,” he said.
The New York Times (February 1, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about President Obama’s tax reform proposals. Kleinbard was also quoted by Bloomberg News, Die Zeit (Germany) and SRF (Switzerland). “Taxing those earnings as part of the transition to an entirely new international tax system will have no effect on future behavior, since the earnings hoard relates entirely to the past,” he said.
C-SPAN (January 27, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard and his book “We Are Better Than This: How Government Should Spend Our Money,” were featured for a discussion about America’s income inequality. “The purpose of the book is to give a stirring lecture on government, but also to get people involved in understanding how the taxing and spending policy of the government affects our happiness and our future wealth,” Kleinbard said.
Bloomberg News (January 22, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about President Obama’s tax agenda.
The New York Times (January 14, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about the economic benefits of healthcare accessibility. “Healthy and adequately nourished citizens are more productive, and will contribute more to the prosperity of society, than will sick and emaciated ones,” he said.
Bloomberg News (January 13, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about the challenges of corporate tax reform. “If the only issue were the policy differences on corporate tax reform, Paul Ryan and the president could meet for tea and be done by dessert,” he said.
Fiscal Times (January 8, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about a proposal to change the way economic impact is measured for legislative bills.
San Jose Mercury News (January 7, 2015)
An op-ed by ran by Edward Kleinbard about income inequality in California. “Inequality continues to rise even though California has one of the most progressive tax structures in the nation,” they wrote.
The New York Times (January 7, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was quoted about a proposal to change the way economic impact is measured for legislative bills. “The hope is by choosing a particularly sympathetic C.B.O. director, the dynamic scoring as implemented will take the rosiest possible interpretations, models and assumptions to produce the most dramatic results,” he said. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer also cited Kleinbard.
Pacifica Radio (January 4, 2015)
Edward Kleinbard was interviewed about his new book, “We Are Better Than This” on Ian Masters’ Background Briefing. They also discussed Kleinbard’s New York Times piece, “A Republican Ruse to Make Tax Cuts Look Good”.