S&P CEO: Business CEO's double down on tax reform to spur growth

Whether it’s a substantial tax cut, or one that underperforms expectations, S&P Global President and CEO Doug Peterson said on Tuesday that “any tax cut is going to be seen as favorable.” Though, he added a cut that incorporated “some sort of a territoriality system and simplification would be far superior.”

Business leaders are paying close attention to tax reform and Trump’s ambitious plan to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent. Which Peterson said during an interview on the FOX Business Network is “one of the most important tools to invest in innovation and growth in the United States, which also creates jobs.”

“In the recent business roundtable survey, 71 percent of the CEOs said that tax reform would be the way that you could see the fastest path to growth in the United States. After that, you had infrastructure investment and regulatory reform,” said Peterson.

In addition to lowering rates, simplifying the complicated tax code would also be beneficial to allowing the U.S. to be more competitive at the global level, Peterson noted.

“And, you could pay for some of the tax reform by the simplification and the elimination of the subsidies.”

Compared to other Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, the U.S. tops the charts with the “highest tax rate of any major OECD country in the world at 35 percent, and 39 if you take into account the state taxes” said Peterson.

He went on to add, “there’s a lot of different ways that this tax reform could be beneficial to the economy, and it is complicated, it is hard, but we would love to see it get done.”