Clinton ‘exit tax’ to take aim at companies’ inversion deals

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will lay out a new plan aimed at tamping down on the rising number of American corporations moving their headquarters overseas to lower their tax burdens.

U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., a Clinton supporter who represents a Phoenix-based congressional district, applauded her proposal.

As Fortune reports, Clinton “has been criticized throughout her campaign, particularly by rival candidate Bernie Sanders, for having close ties to Wall Street”.

Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, made at least $35 million by giving speeches to financial services, real estate, and insurance companies after leaving the White House in 2001, an Associated Press analysis shows. Regarding corporate inversions, he has recommended lowering corporate taxes as a way to attract companies to keep their profits in the U.S. Her op-ed offered a laundry list of new finance reforms that similarly favor more regulation but do not go as far as Sanders, who has called for the government to break up the biggest banks.

Moreover, Clinton indicated she’d combat Republican-led efforts to weaken the the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, including attempts to defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – Warren’s brainchild.

“The correct position of Wall Street is to assist Main Street develop and prosper”, Clinton wrote.

The plan, Sperling said, would be paid for largely by the estimated billions of dollars that will be raised through closing tax avoidance loopholes some US companies take advantage of.

Though the Treasury Department has unveiled new rules to deter companies from considering inversions, officials say only Congress has the authority to halt the practice.

In contrast to Clinton’s proposal, the Republicans have suggested overhauling the entire tax code is the the best way to deal with inversions.

She promised to elaborate on the details of her proposal at upcoming campaign events in the crucial early-primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire, her campaign told Reuters. Obama has proposed raising that threshold to more than 50 percent foreign ownership. She would expand President Obama’s National Network for Manufacturing Innovation program, which supports regional hubs bringing workers, businesses, universities and community colleges together to develop world-leading technologies and production that anchor jobs.

But Clinton – his one-time secretary of state – remains a clear favorite to secure the party nomination.