Despite the short reprieve in individual income tax increases, wealth managers still found a good bit to dislike in President Bidens new infrastructure plan, which imposes significant tax hikes on corporations in a bid to pay for the president’s ambitious $2 trillion spending.
The White House’s Made in America Tax Plan is designed to offset the $2 trillion in infrastructure spending over 15 years. The plan includes a host of corporate tax changes, mostly modifying elements of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that Republicans passed in 2017.
Joshua D. Hargrove, an advisor with Insight Wealth Partners, in Plano, Tex., said raising taxes on corporations will have the biggest impact on most Americans. “Half of America works for a corporation. That 7% corporate tax hike translates into reduced 401(k) matching and fewer bonuses, raises and stock grants. With income phaseouts on IRAs and Roths, our clients rely on those types of benefits to level the savings playing field. Losing these incentives will hurt,” he said.
“It’s a whole lot of bad for our high-net worth clients,” Austin A. Frye, President of Frye Financial in Aventura, Fla., told Financial Advisor Magazine. While his clients wait for the proverbial other shoe to drop next month on what Biden has promised will be higher income, capital gains and estate taxes, they are still concerned with the corporate tax hike and the impact it will have on American companies’ competitiveness, Frye said.
“They are very concerned about the rise in corporate tax rates on public corporations, which raise company's taxes, cut profits and thereby lower stock prices,” he added.
The Biden plan would increase the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% (still lower than the 35% rate before the 2017 tax law), limit a number of deductions and impose a higher minimum tax on global corporations. In addition to raising the corporate rate to 28%, Biden wants to increase minimum taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign income and make it harder for foreign-owned companies with U.S. operations to benefit from shifting profits to low-tax countries.
The plan would create a 15% minimum tax on corporations with book profits of $100 million or higher. Biden would also add a new 10% surtax on corporations that “offshore manufacturing and service jobs to foreign nations in order to sell goods or provide services back to the American market.” This surtax would raise the effective corporate tax rate on this activity up to 30.8%.
“These changes will impact all corporations and some of our business clients,” said Julie E. Hall, a wealth advisor with Vision Capital Partners, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “When tax laws change, as they do, we have to push up our sleeves to review the changes and educate our clients. New tax planning strategies follow new tax laws, and some prior tax planning strategies may become obsolete.”
The Republicans’ 2017 law sought to give U.S. corporations a stronger competitive footing by lightening the tax burden to make it similar to other countries’ systems. Prior to 2017, U.S. corporations faced one of the highest tax rates in the world, prompting some multi-nationals to relocate to nations with friendlier tax regimes.
In contrast, the Biden Administration said it plans to get other countries to impose similar taxes, so that U.S. corporations doesn’t lag their foreign competitors. The White House said it will introduce the second part of Biden’s infrastructure plan, which will focus on individual tax hikes targeting the wealthy, sometime next month.
While advisors have been bracing for higher taxes on individual clients earning $400,000 or more, White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday said that the $400,000 threshold for new taxes would be for families, not individuals, meaning lower-earning individuals will likely face higher taxes.
“Biden campaigned on taxing the wealthy and that's what he intends to do,” Frye said. “We manage almost half a billion dollars for mostly high net worth clients. We expect that they will pay higher personal income taxes, higher capital gain rates, and much more in estate taxes. The item that irks them the most is the estate tax, which they view as a double taxation issue.”
Some advisors see a silver lining. For Marianela Collado, a CEO with Tobias Financial in Plantation, Fla., the continuing saga of tax changes that U.S. taxpayers are facing provides her with a “major opportunity” for us to demonstrate her value. “I always say that because of changes in tax laws, I will always have a job," she says. "This is the time for us to proactively address issues that the client may not even be aware will impact them. This is when we, as planners, are able to get creative and think out of the box to help clients.”