Border Adjustments and the Conservation of Tax Planning

This article is based on Schizer’s keynote address at the 17th annual NYU-KPMG Tax Symposium on March 10. In this article, Schizer argues that U.S. corporate and shareholder taxes need to be reformed, and the corporate rate should be much lower. In reforming this dysfunctional regime, according to Schizer, Congress should keep both of these taxes as a form of built-in redundancy; if one tax is avoided, the other can still be collected. More generally, Congress should be wary of Utopian solutions. Tax reform is more likely to change tax planning than to eliminate it entirely, Schizer concludes. For instance, although border adjustments would foreclose some strategies, they would encourage others