Billion$ in Profits, Zero in Taxes
Wednesday, October 19, 2011 Posted by Jim Hightower
Listen to this Commentary
Let's play, "Scamming the System !" It's the exciting and richly rewarding game that allows every American to use offshore income shelters and a labyrinth of loopholes to dodge their tax responsibilities. To get in the game, all you need is a few dozen tax lawyers, a flock of lobbyists, and an office in the Cayman Islands.
What ? You don't have any of those things ? Well now – that's your fault, isn't it?
But them that's got – including Boeing, eBay, GE, Verizon, and at least a couple of dozen other brand-name players – are in the game big time. A new report by the Institute for Policy Studies reveals that these multibillion-dollar giants pay far more to their CEOs than they pay in taxes to help fund our nation's crucial needs.
In fact, IPS reports that these top executives got their fat paychecks precisely because they were so focused on tax dodging. The corporations analyzed in the report averaged $1.9 billion in profits last year, yet paid zero in federal income taxes – instead, manipulating the system to get an average of $400 million each in refunds from the IRS! For being such skilled scammers, the chieftains of these corporations raked in an average of $16 million in personal pay last year – way above the average pay for CEOs of other big businesses.
Meanwhile, corporations are lobbying Washington to be given a tax cut. They wail that the U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent is higher than any other industrial nation except Japan and that this "burden" is hobbling their global competitiveness. B.S. Рas the IPS expos̩ documents, these scammers aren't paying anywhere near 35 percent Рif anything.
Wow, these greedheads really put the "sin" in cynical. To help stop them from gaming us, check out the Institute's reform recommendations Here>
www.ips-dc.org.
Lux e tenebris
1 comment:
Yes, you are right. Don't you think it's high time we scrapped our tax system? There are companies with interests of both left and right who legally dodge US taxes. Example: GE and Oil companies. GE paid no taxes in 2010 due to losses at GE financial, however received $3.2 billion, and the oil companies pay no US taxes due to foreign taxes. (Exxon paid $15.2 billion international, $110 million local, but received $156 million federal) There are (I'm sure) thousands more, but not all, as you rightly point out, have any lobbyists or crews of tax experts that can enable them to dodge taxes. On the other hand, you have the government interfering with the free market, favoring one company over another with "grants," which in many cases turn out to be nothing more than wasteful spending. The only fair thing to do is to get government out of the free market, and go to either a fair or flat tax system, which will eliminate lobbyists, and eliminate all loopholes, which eliminates tax lawyers.
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