September 14, 2015
Josh Barro had an interesting piece where he asked several prominent public finance economists for their assessment of the growth impact of the tax cuts put forward by Jeb Bush as part of his presidential campaign. Barro noted a wide range of opinions, with some expecting little impact and others arguing that it would have a large positive impact on growth.
One of the people in the latter category was Boston University economist Larry Kotlikoff. According to Barro:
“He thought the Bush plan, especially its provision allowing companies to fully and immediately deduct capital expenses from their taxes, would have large and swift economic effects. He said he thought the plan would grow the economy by more than 5 percent, and he thought most of those effects would be felt within the first decade, pointing to Ireland as an example of a country that experienced rapid economic growth after cutting corporate income taxes.”
It’s interesting that Kotlikoff would seize on the expensing provisions for new investment as being especially important for boosting growth. President Obama actually included expensing of capital investment as part of his stimulus package. He originally continued a limited 50 percent expensing provision that had been part of President Bush’s 2008 stimulus package. He then expanded this in 2010 to a full expensing provision for 2011 and 2012.
While equipment investment grew at a 12.2 healthy pace in these years, that is not especially impressive since it was still recovering from a drop of nearly 30 percent in 2008 and 2009. By comparison, in the years 2004–2006, equipment investment grew at an 8.6 percent annual rate. This was in the absence of any comparable tax provision and no remotely comparable recession falloff from which to recover. (In 2012, equipment investment was 4.6 percent above the pre-recession peak in 2007. By comparison, in 2006 it was 19.9 percent higher than its 2000 peak.)
It is also worth noting that a temporary credit is likely to provide more of a boost than a permanent credit. Firms have a strong incentive to move their investment plans forward to take advantage of a temporary tax credit. This incentive would not exist with a permanent credit. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that the boost to investment we saw from changing the tax provision for new investment in 2011-2012 would be larger than the boost we would receive from permanently changing the provision, as Jeb Bush has proposed.
Note: Typos and dates corrected.
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