Obama to Propose ‘Insourcing’ Tax Incentives

President Barack Obama plans to include tax incentives in his fiscal 2013 budget to encourage more U.S.-based multinational companies to relocate jobs fr om foreign countries back home.

At an event Wednesday with business leaders to promote so-called “insourcing” of jobs, Obama described in general terms how he intended to propose such incentives.

“Right now, we’re at a unique moment, an inflection point, a period wh ere we’ve got the opportunity for those jobs to come back,” said Obama. “And the business leaders in this room, they’re ahead of the curve, they recognize it. I’ll give you just a few examples. After shedding jobs for more than a decade, American manufacturers have now added jobs for two years in a row. That’s good news. But when a lot of folks are still looking for work, now is the time for us to step on the gas. So that’s why I pushed Congress to extend the payroll tax cut this year, so that 160 million working Americans weren’t hit with a tax hike. Now is the time to extend that middle class tax cut for all of this year. It’s the right thing to do, and we need to get that done. But we’re going to have to do more. And that’s why, in the next few weeks, we’re also going to put forward new tax proposals that reward companies that choose to bring jobs home and invest in America. And we’re going to eliminate tax breaks for companies that are moving jobs overseas, because there is an opportunity to be had right here and right now. There are workers ready to work, right now.”

Obama noted that he has also set a goal of doubling U.S. exports of goods and services by 2014, and the administration is already “a little ahead of schedule in meeting that goal.”

Congress is expected to return from its winter recess next week, and begin meeting in a conference committee to agree on a way to pay for extending the payroll tax cut through the rest of the year.