TAXING ERRORS

The White House said Monday it wants to "detect and pursue" tax 'evaders', while closing tax 'loopholes' and 'shutting off' overseas tax shelters. And to police it all, it wants to hire another 800 new IRS agents. Under the plan:

• Companies would no longer be able to write off some expenses in the United States on profits they make overseas.
• Nor would they be able to reinvest offshore earnings overseas -- a practice which, some claim, totals $700 billion or more in earnings kept abroad.

The idea behind all this is to keep companies from creating jobs in other countries, and to create more here. But it's a bad idea, from start to finish:

• Most of the jobs U.S. companies create overseas are not highly skilled jobs.
• Yet, the profits our firms make overseas help us to maintain the managerial and skilled positions here in the United States.

Do we want to drive those investments completely overseas? And do we really want highly trained American workers to compete with hundreds of millions of unskilled, uneducated laborers in India, China and elsewhere?

The plan will no doubt have mass appeal, but it will backfire, and badly.

It's a recipe for low wages and bad jobs here in the United States.

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