House Speaker John Boehner recently joined the chorus of notables calling for corporate tax reform in any deficit-reduction package. Both Democrats and Republicans want to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, in return for eliminating the tax credits and deductions available primarily to U.S. corporations.

The rationale behind the proposal is sound in theory — a lower tax rate would help all profitable corporations. By contrast, Congress often bestows tax benefits on industries that are perceived as potential winners or those wielding political clout.

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AS Congress starts the next round of debt ceiling negotiations, the United States Chamber of Commerce and other business groups are advocating tax relief for foreign profits of corporations based in the United States. Those profits are now subject to a 35 percent corporate tax rate, but the tax can be totally avoided as long as the United States corporations hold the profits in their accounts at foreign banks.

The current system needs reform: it generates minimal tax revenue while deterring American corporations from using their foreign profits to build facilities in the United States.

Business interests are calling for a so-called tax holiday, in which American corporations would be allowed to transfer their foreign profits to their American bank accounts at a tax rate under 6 percent for one year. Such a holiday would raise revenues and create jobs in the United States, according to the WinAmerica Campaign, a coalition of companies including Apple, Google and Pfizer.

But the last time such a holiday was tried, in 2004, it raised less than $19 billion and did not substantially increase jobs. Most of the repatriated profits went to corporate shareholders, through dividends or stock repurchases.

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