Why talk entitlement cuts and not corporate tax dodgers?

>>> during the campaign we heard mitt romney and many of his supporters say that taxes were too high on corporations. the gop calls these companies, what was it?

>> job creators.

>> job creators.

>> job creators.

>> job creators.

>> right, how could i forget? job creators. except these job creators seem more adept at creating tax havens . bloomberg reports google has she willered -- sheltered at reported $10 billion in tax shelters . we're joined by robert reich , former secretary of labor and now professor of economics at uc-berkeley, and the author of "beyond outrage." good afternoon.

>> good afternoon.

>> while we're focused on cuts to entitlements rather than corporate tax cheats who relentlessly steal money from this government every year without fail?

>> because the corporate tax cheats among many others, wealthy and powerful interests in this country, have a very, very cunning ability to distract attention from what they are doing and put attention on programs that benefit many middle class people and many poor people and say they have to be cut. medicaid has to be cut. that kind of welfare has got to be cut. we have 47% of americans who are basically takers instead of givers, and by doing that they are distracting attention from corporate welfare , huge amounts of subsidies and tax breaks going to individual companies, and they are also distracting attention from all of these hi jinxes such as the tax avoidance industry represented by what google is doing.

>> and, indeed, i remember mitt romney 's tax return . in fact, it took me about four weeks to read it because it was prepared by some of these very same people. what corporations contribute to federal revenue as you know has declined dramatically from 33% to about 9% by one estimate in the past few decades. yet what individuals pay in payroll taxes has increased dramatically. isn't that a kind of taxpayer funded corporate welfare ?

>> it is, and beware. focus on that. the payroll tax is relatively regressive, and by that i mean if you are earning $50,000 or even $100,000, you are paying every dollar of that is being subjected to the payroll tax . but once you hit $110,000, you are no longer paying any additional payroll taxes . it's a ceiling on the social security payroll tax . and those have gone up. the payroll tax has gone up substantially. sales taxes have gone up substantially. property taxes have gone up substantially, but the corporate income tax has gone down. the effective income tax , that's what corporations actually pay, has plummeted over the years. and that is something we do not talk about. certainly we talk about the fact that the top marginal income tax rate has also dropped, but the fact that the top corporate effective corporate tax rate has also dropped, no. you hear, instead, the business round table, the chamber of commerce , all of these companies and trade associations say, no, we can't be competitive because our tax rates are too high.

>> yes. well, you'll remember mr. romney actually applauded these tax cheats in august. he said they know how to find ways to get through the tax code , save money by putting various things in the places where there are low tax havens . how do you fight someone who sees cheating as a virtue? and indeed as many of these companies appear to.

>> well, first of all, you have to acknowledge that they are creating jobs. they are job creators, but the skro jobs they create are tax advisers, tax attorneys, and accountants to find special places around the world that charge nothing with regard to corporate income taxes and cleverly help them transfer their profits to these places. how do you stop it? well, you have got to have laws that prohibit it absolutely. you have got to have very high fines and penalties to make it not worth their while, and you've got to have enforcement mechanisms, enforcers in the irs and other tax authorities around the world that can actually root this out. some of it is very complicated. but you see, martin, one of their techniques is to put a squeeze on the enforcement authority's budgets so that the enforcement authorities, the irs and the treasury department , doesn't have the manpower to do this.

>> brilliant. professor robert reich , thank you, sir.