<div dir="ltr"><span class="" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px"><br>> Thirteen Facts About America's Tax-Dodging Corporations <br>> Saturday, 29 June 2013 10:51 By Richard Eskow, Campaign for America's Future | <br>
> Op-Ed <br>> Truthout doesn’t take corporate funding - that’s why we’re able to confront <br>> the forces of greed and regression. Support us in this mission: make a tax- <br>> deductible donation today by clicking here. <br>
> (Photo: Michael Fleshman / Flickr)A judicious writer avoids adjectives like <br>> “mindblowing,” especially when covering political or economic issues. But no <br>> other word seems to describe the stunning reality of corporate taxation in <br>
> modern America, which cries out for the italics-heavy, exclamation-point- <br>> driven format made famous by Ripley’s Believe It or Not. <br>> Stylistic overkill? Read these thirteen facts and you may change your mind. <br>
> 1. We’re told we can’t “afford” full Social Security benefits, even though <br>> closing corporate tax-haven loopholes would pay for Obama’s “chained CPI” <br>> benefit cut more than ten times over! <br>> Abusive offshore tax havens cost the US $150 billion in lost tax revenue every <br>
> year (via FACT Coalition). That’s $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. <br>> The “chained CPI” cut, proposed by President Obama and supported by <br>> Republicans, is projected to “save” a total of $122 billion to $130 billion <br>
> over the same time period by denying benefits to seniors and disabled people. <br>> It’s true. “Serious” politicians and pundits are demanding that ordinary <br>> people sacrifice earned benefits, while at the same time allowing corporations <br>
> to avoid more than ten times as much in taxes. <br>> 2. Corporate tax rates are near their 60-year low, even though profits are at <br>> a 60-year high! <br>> Need we say more? <br>> (Source: Americans for Tax Fairness.) <br>
> 3. Wells Fargo got $8 billion in tax breaks, even as executives at its <br>> subsidiary Wachovia avoided indictment for laundering money for the Mexican <br>> drug cartels! <br>> That’s right. Wells Fargo paid a negative tax rate of -1.4 percent between <br>
> 2008 and 2010 while Wachovia, a Wells Fargo subsidiary, admitted to laundering <br>> more than $378 billion for Mexican drug gangs. <br>> We’re talking about crazed killers like “El Loco” and gangs like “Los Zetas” – <br>
> gangs who cut people’s heads off and toss them out onto disco dance floors or <br>> display them in the town square. <br>> Wachovia bankers ignored repeated warnings from law enforcement officials, and <br>> continued to launder money for cartels that have murdered tens of thousands. <br>
> And yet no criminal indictments were handed down because, as a Senate <br>> investigator told Bloomberg News, “”There’s no capacity to regulate or punish <br>> them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure.” <br>
> 4. Some other huge corporations paid less than nothing, too. <br>> Pepco Holdings (-57.6% tax rate) <br>> General Electric (-45.3%) <br>> DuPont (-3.4%) <br>> Verizon (-2.9%) <br>> Boeing (-1.8%) <br>> Honeywell (-0.7%) <br>
> (Source: Citizens for Tax Justice) <br>> 5. The amount of money US corporations are holding offshore is an estimated <br>> one trillion dollars! <br>> Rather than tax these profits the way other countries do, corporate <br>
> politicians are promoting a tax “repatriation” break that would let <br>> corporations “bring this money home” while paying even less than their <br>> currently low rates. <br>> They tried that in 2004 and it didn’t create any jobs. In fact, corporations <br>
> took the tax break and then fired thousands of people. What “repatriation” did <br>> do is line a lot of wealthy investors’ pockets. <br>> So, naturally, they want to do it again. <br>> 6. One building in the Cayman Islands is the official location of 18,857 <br>
> corporations! <br>> According to the Government Accountability Office, a five-story building <br>> called “Ugland House” is home to nearly twenty thousand corporations. That’s <br>> impressive, especially for such a small edifice. (Perhaps it has supernatural <br>
> half-floors and space-time defying “mind tunnels” like the office in Being <br>> John Malkovich.) <br>> While impressive, Ugland House’s distinction pales next to that of 1209 North <br>> Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware. According to one investigation, that <br>
> address is home to 217,000 corporations. <br>> That’s because Delaware has very generous tax rules – and, as a result, is <br>> home to more than half of all the corporate subsidiaries in the United <br>> States.That’s startling, since only 1/342th of the nation’s population lives <br>
> in that state (917,092 residents, out of a national total of 313,914,040, <br>> according to the latest census results). <br>> 7. Conservatives complain about the “official” corporate tax rate in this <br>> country, but corporations actually pay roughly one-third of the official rate <br>
> in actual taxes. <br>> The official, or “statutory,” corporate tax rate is 35 percent. But the actual <br>> rate paid by American corporations is only 12 percent, less than that paid by <br>> many middle-class Americans. <br>
> (Source: The FACT Coalition.) <br>> In fact, US Corporations pay less tax as a percentage of the GDP than <br>> corporations in Canada. Or Japan … <br>> … or South Korea. Or Norway. Or Luxembourg, New Zealand, Israel, the Czech <br>
> Republic, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, <br>> and Italy. <br>> (Source: OECD StatsExtract interactive database.) <br>> 8. Corporations used to pay 30 percent of Federal taxes, and now they pay less <br>
> than 7 percent! <br>> That’s because the corporate tax rate has plunged since Dwight D. Eisenhower <br>> was President and is now the lowest it’s been in modern history. <br>> (Source: FACT Coalition.) <br>> 9. Big corporations paid $216 million to Congress and got $223 billion in tax <br>
> breaks! <br>> As Citizens for Tax Justice and USPIRG reported, 280 large and profitable <br>> corporations contributed $216 million to Congressional campaigns over four <br>> election cycles and got nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars in tax breaks. <br>
> That’s a terrific investment for them – a return of more than a thousand to <br>> one – but it’s a bad deal for the American people. <br>> 10. We don’t even know who owns some corporations, even though that makes it <br>
> easier to evade taxes, dodge creditors, avoid paying alimony or child support, <br>> and even fund terrorism! <br>> Here are some examples of investments that might represent a terror threat. <br>> Corporate interests are blocking disclosure rules that would help protect our <br>
> national security. <br>> 11. Bank of America committed foreclosure fraud, was bailed out by the <br>> government, and then paid no taxes on $4.4 billion in profit! <br>> That’s right. In 2010, while BofA was negotiating a sweet settlement deal for <br>
> its foreclosure fraud, it paid nothing in taxes. (Source: FACT Coalition.) <br>> Zero, on $17.2 billion in offshore earnings. (Source: Americans for Tax <br>> Fairness.) <br>> Its $4.1 billion tax break came on the heels of the bank’s taxpayer-funded <br>
> bailout, immunity from prosecution for its criminal employees, and a cushy <br>> government settlement for its foreclosure fraud. <br>> Now David Dayen reports that the bank has apparently continued to defraud <br>
> customers in violation of its government settlement. Whistleblowers have <br>> stated in affidavits that they were “told to lie” to customers, continued to <br>> deceive homeowners before foreclosing on them, and flipped customers to new <br>
> servicing companies to invalidate previous homeowner agreements. <br>> 12. What they call “tax reform” would actually prevent our elected <br>> representatives from giving businesses financial incentives to improve our <br>
> lives! <br>> The word “reform” is an honorable one that’s been put to some dishonorable <br>> uses lately. “Entitlement reform,” for example, is merely a euphemism for <br>> gutting Social Security and Medicare. <br>
> Similarly, corporate-backed politicians are pushing a formula for permanent <br>> corporate tax breaks and calling it “tax reform.” They insist their “reform” <br>> be “revenue neutral” and say it will “broaden the base while lowering the <br>
> rate.” <br>> Here’s an English translation: The current, unsustainably low rates for <br>> corporations would be made permanent, while eliminating many tax deductions in <br>> the name of “simplification.” <br>
> Here’s what that really means: The domestic tax credit for creating jobs? <br>> Gone. Tax breaks for protecting the environment with clean energy, rather than <br>> harming other people’s health and leaving a mess for the rest of us to clean <br>
> up? Gone. <br>> All in all we’d lose dozens of important policies that make our lives better, <br>> while permanently fixing corporate taxes at today’s cushy giveaway rates. <br>> “Reform”? Ripoff is more like it. <br>
> 13. Despite their greed, mismanagement, and freeloading, tax-dodging <br>> corporations are using shell organizations like “Fix the Debt” and “the <br>> Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget” to tell ordinary Americans they <br>
> have to sacrifice even more to preserve corporate wealth! <br>> These organizations are using the heads of failed banks – people like Chase’s <br>> Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs – to dispense “advice on the <br>
> economy.” That’s like getting navigation tips from the captain of the Exxon <br>> Valdez. <br>> (Tax breaks for Exxon Mobil: $4.1 billion between 2008 and 2010. The company <br>> paid no taxes at all in 2009.) <br>
> These executives and their paid spokespeople tell the rest of us we need to <br>> “sacrifice” and “tighten our belts” so that their party can go on forever. And <br>> too often they’re treated as credible sources, rather than as corrupting <br>
> influences on our public life. <br>> It’s all true – and there are many more astonishing facts to be found in the <br>> world of corporate taxation. To fix the economy more people will need to learn <br>> about them – and demand that they be changed. <br>
> The writer and analyst in me wants to apologize for all the italicizing and <br>> all those exclamation points. But the American citizen in me wants to shout <br>> the truth out for all the world to hear – believe it or not! </span><br>
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