WASHINGTON: Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry suggested to business leaders on Friday he may propose a way to make it easier for US corporations to bring bring home overseas profits, a participant at his event said.
Texas Governor Perry spoke to business leaders privately at the National Association of Wholesale Distributors in Washington, where he talked about an economic plan he is to unveil during a visit to South Carolina on Tuesday.
"The one thing that he did allude to was that tax repatriation would be addressed in the plan and corporations with money overseas would probably be supportive of the plan," a participant at the Perry event said.
Under current law, many US corporations put off paying a 35 percent tax on overseas profits by keeping that money offshore. Others bring the money home and pay the tax.
But an estimated $1.5 trillion has been socked away overseas by US companies hoping for reform of the US tax code, or a "holiday" that would let them, on a one-time basis, repatriate overseas profits at a reduced tax rate.
Companies have been lobbying hard for separate legislation to create such a repatriation tax holiday. Its fate may have been hurt by recent studies finding that an early "holiday" failed to create new US jobs, as had been promised.
Perry has also described plans to propose a flat income tax as part of a tax code overhaul if he were to be elected president in November 2012.
Perry soared to the top of polls of Republican voters only to fall behind front-runners Mitt Romney and Herman Cain after shaky debate performances.
The participant said Perry joked about the roller-coaster nature of his campaign over the last two months, saying the first weeks had been a "love-fest" but that afterward he had taken a kick in the pants.
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