A Charlie Brown Congress

Excellent article by Frank Knapp Jr. in The Hill, about the much-discussed repatriation tax holiday. Sometimes an analogy is the best way to explain the issue, and Knapp's got it nailed.

Lucy is at it again. “I’ll hold the ball, and you come running and kick it,” Lucy tells Charlie Brown.

We all know what to expect. Charlie Brown will run to kick the football and Lucy will pull it away...again. Charlie will fall flat on his back.

This gag is playing out right now in Congress. U.S. multinational corporations (aka Lucy) are holding hundreds of billions of dollars in profits overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes. They want Congress (aka Charlie Brown) to let them bring those dollars back to the U.S. without paying hardly any taxes (Congress committing to kick the ball) in the belief they will invest them in production and hiring here at home (the football flying through the air instead of Charlie).

This process is called a “repatriation tax holiday” and, just as in the Peanuts cartoon, Congress has seen this before.

Read on. More here.