WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama wants to close dozens of loopholes that let some companies pay little or nothing in taxes. But he also wants to open new ones for manufacturers and companies that invest in clean energy.
To some analysts, the new loopholes risk upending the level playing field Obama says he wants to create.
Some also fear that companies could game the system to grab the new tax breaks.
"The administration is not making sense," says Martin Sullivan, contributing editor at publisher Tax Analysts. "The whole idea of corporate tax reform is to get rid of loopholes, and this plan is adding loopholes back in."
Economists across the political spectrum support a kind of grand bargain: cut corporate tax rates while deleting tax breaks that benefit a favored few.
The plan the government rolled out Wednesday goes a long way toward doing that. It lowers the official corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent. And it eliminates many tax loopholes.
But the plan gives manufacturers new tax breaks, which would cut their effective tax rate to no more than 25 percent.
