Merck CEO Frazier Joins Other CEOs: Taxes On Top Earners Not A Job-Killer

Count Merck Chairman Kenneth Frazier -- a lawyer, by training -- as yet another among the growing chorus of Fortune 50 Chairmen and CEOs who've come out in favor of Mr. Obama's plan to allow the marginal income tax rate on the wealthiest two percent of US earners to rise -- return to the pre-Bush-era tax cut rates.

Earlier last week, the Chairmen and CEOs of Catepillar, Goldman Sachs,GE and Honeywell, among many, many others -- through the Business Roundtable -- expressed the view that what the top one or two percent of US earners pay in federal income taxes (at least within the limits of currently-contemplated proposals) will not be a significant drag on the continued economic recovery, or job-creation, in the US.

This increased individual tax equity -- is both a just and sensible policy -- and would provide more flexibilty in closing the looming fiscal gaps. So, Kudos here go to Merck's Mr. Frazier.

From Financial Times reporting, then:

. . . .[T]he fate of expiring tax cuts on the top 2 per cent income bracket has been a sticking point in the negotiations between Republicans and Democrats. Mr Frazier said that allowing taxes to rise on the wealthy and taxing capital gains income was less important for the US economy than making changes to the corporate tax code. “The big problem for US companies is not what you tax people on the top end or capital gains,” Mr Frazier said. “It’s that US companies are disadvantaged in the world in terms of supply chain and global capital if you have a tax system that is not a territorial tax system, where you pay taxes twice on money that is made outside the US. . . .”

Quite so.