Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post has a broad summary of the president’s new corporate tax reform proposal, which is itself more of a sketch or outline:

The plan would lower the nation’s corporate tax rate to 28 percent. At the same time, he wants to boost overall revenues from corporate taxation by banning numerous deductions and loopholes that save companies tens of billions of dollars a year on their tax bills, according to a senior administration official.

We don’t know which deductions and loopholes will be banned, but we do have a sense:

Obama is also targeting oil and gas companies for tax increases while promising special breaks for manufacturing companies, according to a senior administration official.

and

Under the corporate tax plan, American multinational corporations will have to pay a minimum tax on their foreign earnings — to prevent firms from sheltering profits overseas. Obama also wants to end tax breaks for companies that outsource and give new tax incentives to firms that move jobs back home.

Rather than moving towards a territorial tax system, it seems that the president aims to move in the opposite direction.

Ezra Klein observes the following about the Obama administration’s proposal:

In the first section, they list a slew of tax breaks and giveaways and deductions that we could eliminate. But, to the disappointment of many, that won’t bring the rate down very far. Rather, the White House notes, bringing the rate down will require going after some combination of the deductability of interest, the treatment of depreciation, the way partnerships are taxed, and the growing disparity between the income companies report to their shareholders and the income they report to the IRS.
Put differently, getting the rate down to 28 percent requires making hard decisions about legitimate, fundamental features of the corporate tax code — decisions that the White House will clarify, but not specifically make. Their main point, in a sense, is that it’s not all about breaks for jets and oil companies, no matter how often those feature in the president’s speeches.
In the second section, the administration proposes expanding the tax credit for R&D and bringing the maximum tax rate on manufacturers down to 25 percent. That is specific.

In the software industry, something like this would be called vaporware – you announce a theoretical new product without offering any concrete details, in part to prevent your customers from embracing a real alternative that, by virtue of being a real thing, will seem flawed by comparison. In the political arena, however, we’re dealing with vaporware vs. vaporware, i.e., one side offers a vague, ill-defined plan and puts it up against some other vague, ill-defined plan, in part because no president can unilaterally determine the shape of legislation.

But when we view the president’s corporate tax proposals in the broader context of his efforts to raise taxes on dividend income (more here from Alex Tabarrok) and an unfortunate picture starts to develop.