Letters: Doing the math on CEO pay

Re “Execs profit at public’s expense,” Column, Aug. 28

David Lazarus calls the corporate tax deduction for CEO pay a loophole, but compensation is among the most straightforward of corporate expenses. The corporation pays the money to the employees, its profits are reduced by what it pays, and the employees pay taxes on what they receive. Calling this a loophole is simply wrong. There are many reasons why a corporation might not owe federal taxes in a given year; some have to do with special tax breaks, but most do not.

Many economists and the president say corporate tax rates should be lower, but Lazarus doesn’t. Virtually everyone agrees that the tax code should be simpler, but Lazarus wants special rules for CEO compensation. He wants to make our tax code even less competitive and more complex for multinationals.

Does Lazarus understand tax structures and how business actually functions?

Nicolas Nierenberg

La Jolla

The elephant in the room is campaign financing. Fix that and many other ills of our political system will naturally get fixed.

It would be far less expensive overall to give a half a billion dollars to any candidate who can muster some pre-defined number of signatures of registered voters. That, or pick some other relatively unbiased way of financing a national campaign.

Whatever system we choose, we’ve got to change campaign finance or we will bury ourselves with tax loopholes and a thousand other injustices of power and money.

Dave Rowe

Torrance

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