Corporate Taxation in Pursuit of Growth

Abstract

Popular demand for greater equity in the tax code is credited for the enactment of the Tax Reform of 1986. An exclusive focus on fairness, however, obscures the importance of growth as a causal factor. It is argued here that the radical transformation of the corporate code was based on a vastly different strategy for economic growth and productive investment. Conventional wisdom also has it that the reform effort represented the triumph of ideas over special interests. But this article suggests that a new industrial coalition of business supporters was critical to the enactment of this alternative growth strategy.