William Tauzin: “Under the current Income Tax Code, when we manufacture any product, let us take that box of cereal, all the way from the…”

“Under the current Income Tax Code, when we manufacture any product, let us take that box of cereal, all the way from the farmer all the way to the retailer, when that product is sold in foreign commerce today, it bears all the costs of the IRS in its price. That is why it fails to compete when it gets overseas, because guess what happens if you ship it to England? In England they put another tax on it, so it is taxed in England and it is taxed in America. When England sends a box of cereal to America, they exempt that box of cereal from their value-added tax. We do not tax it when it gets here, so it comes in tax-free. In short, our products are at a great disadvantage with our Income Tax Code, and, in short, if we changed it to what the gentleman from Colorado, [Mr. Dan Schaefer] and I have recommended, that box of cereal would enter the market in Great Britain, let us say, without a single IRS tax on its back. It would get the VAT tax when it got there, but it would compete fairly against the English box of cereal that also had a VAT tax on it. In short, we would equalize our products in the marketplace, establish a fair playing field in exports, and we would create American jobs the likes of which we have not seen in decades.”