It is 1030am on 19th February 2012
Why should Barrack Obama’s speeches that suggest withdrawal of tax subsidies to American companies that offshore work, find an opposition in those countries that benefit from offshoring (say India)? After all, he is not suggesting that companies should not offshore – all that he is attempting is to direct tax incentives to those that bring back jobs to America. Now what is wrong with that? And what moral or ethical arguments do countries like India (that have more restrictive regimes for their home-grown businesses to freely offshore their businesses or for investors to smoothly invest and repatriate incomes in their countries) have?
This and other similar debates seem to be increasingly happening in the corridors of global business conferences. As is usual, there is truth and logic in each side of the debate, but as is usual again, there seems to be a lack of lateral thinking amongst the debaters to find a win-win situation. For instance, why can’t the American’s evolve a system by which for every dollar of net profits that US companies gain by offshoring, they contribute 10 cents to a national manufacturing fund that is then used to manufacture (within the USA) all or part of USAID’s current and future hardware and software as well as equipment requirements for its global AID programme across multiple sectors? Add to this, that existing tax subsidies could be made effective on a post-facto basis.
Hope you are having a great day and an exciting start of a great week.
No comments:
Post a Comment