Starbucks’s Schultz: Cutting corporate tax rate could be ‘a mistake’

Starbucks executive chairman Howard Schultz on Wednesday warned against cutting the corporate tax rate in the U.S. without also undertaking more substantial tax reform. 

“You can’t have a corporate tax cut without having a transformation in complete tax reform. And if there’s going to be a corporate tax cut that is going to add to the national debt … then I think it’s a mistake,” he told ABC News. 

“You can’t isolate tax reform by starting with a corporate tax cut and leaving it there,” he said.

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Schultz also said that if President Trump’s proposal to cut the corporate tax from 35 percent to 20 percent goes into effect, businesses should use the savings to benefit their employees. 

“I would hope that [businesses] would use it in ways that would advance their employees, to work what we need to do at our communities and building a better society,” he said.

Trump is pushing a tax-reform plan that, in addition to calling for a massive reduction in the corporate tax rate, would seek to reduce the number of individual tax brackets from seven to three and double the standard deduction for married couples and individuals.

In a speech in Harrisburg, Pa., on Wednesday, Trump sought to cast the plan as a major windfall for working-class Americans. Opponents, however, say corporations and the wealthiest Americans would see the greatest benefit under the plan.  

Speculation has long swirled around Schultz for his potential political aspirations, although he denies he is interested in running for office.