Corporate Elites Shouldn't Get Tax Breaks for Their Leftist Activism | Opinion

Apparently, flying the right flag at the office and saying the right things at cocktail parties are no longer sufficient for maintaining woke status. In the contest between common sense and crazy, corporate elites have gone full crazy.

The case in point: major businesses like Citigroup, Salesforce, Yelp and now Amazon are offering to subsidize "abortion tourism" for their employees. With leaked indications that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade, you can bet their ranks will swell. Meanwhile, Disney is planning to help its employees secure gender transition "care" for their children.

While the radical Left drives this insanity, the law enables it. The current U.S. tax code allows employers to deduct employee compensation and benefits. Because a lot can fall under that umbrella, the code also specifies certain expenses that don't qualify for tax breaks. But there is no provision that prohibits Citigroup and others from deducting abortion and gender transition costs. As a result, these corporations may be able to help their employees kill their unborn children or transition their son into a daughter tax-free!

This has to change. Businesses should not receive tax breaks for radical leftist activism, especially when that activism jeopardizes our children. Our tax code should encourage family formation and promote a culture of life. Instead, it too often encourages subsidies for the murder of unborn babies and the performance of horrific "medical" treatments on kids.

I'm introducing legislation to eliminate this grotesque incentive. It's a common-sense bill that will make clear that abortion travel costs and child gender transition fees are not ordinary business expenses and cannot be deducted from an employer's tax liability.

However, it's not enough to remove corporate subsidies. To make real, lasting headway, we also need to change corporate culture. Today, executives view themselves as leaders of the global progressive movement. Whether because they truly believe the insanity or because they'd rather side with leftist activists than feel their wrath on social media, they have embraced all the darkest elements of the woke creed.

Citi (the bank that received the largest amount of federal bailout funds in 2008) portrayed its new policy to shareholders in deceptively positive language: "In response to changes in reproductive healthcare laws in certain states in the U.S., beginning in 2022 we provide travel benefits to facilitate access to adequate resources." Such euphemisms belie the fact that the bank is sponsoring abortion on demand.

And look at Disney. A company ostensibly dedicated to putting smiles on children's faces now brags about "working with our benefits team to give information about gender-affirmation procedures, both for our employees [and] also our employees who have kids who are transitioning." By "gender-affirmation procedures," Disney means puberty blockers, hormone therapies and even surgeries for children.

These corporations, and others like them, should not look to the Republican Party for support. Public policy should be used to strengthen families, not woke executives. We must work to strip the latter of undeserved benefits while empowering the former. That means further expanding the child tax credit to relieve the financial burden of raising children. It means protecting kids from leftist indoctrination in public schools. It means doing everything possible to prevent harm to our nation's children, born and unborn.

Eliminating unjust tax breaks for radical corporate activism is one step in the right direction. Business and good government don't have to be at odds. But if executive elites think they can force the rest of the country to support their insane policies, they have another thing coming.

Marco Rubio, a Republican, is the senior U.S. senator from Florida.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.