Corporate tax rates are near their 60-year low, even though profits are at a 60-year high. The official, or “statutory,” corporate tax rate is 35 percent. But the actual rate paid by American corporations is only 12 percent, less than that paid by many middle-class Americans. Corporations used to pay 30 percent of Federal taxation, and now they pay less than 7 percent!
Offshore tax havens cost the US $150 billion in lost tax revenue every year (via FACT Coalition). That’s $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. The “chained CPI” cut, proposed by President Obama and supported by Republicans, is projected to “save” a total of $122 billion to $130 billion over the same time period by denying benefits to seniors and disabled people. Politicians are demanding that ordinary people sacrifice earned benefits, while at the same time allowing corporations to avoid more than ten times as much in taxes.
Wells Fargo got $8 billion in tax breaks. Wells Fargo paid a negative tax rate of -1.4 percent between 2008 and 2010. Executives at its subsidiary Wachovia avoided indictment for laundering money for the Mexican drug cartels. We’re talking about crazed killers like “El Loco” and gangs like “Los Zetas” – gangs who cut people’s heads off and toss them out onto disco dance floors or display them in the town square. Wachovia bankers ignored repeated warnings from law enforcement officials, and continued to launder money for cartels that have murdered tens of thousands. no criminal indictments were handed down because, as a Senate investigator told Bloomberg News, “”There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure.”
Other huge corporations who paid negative tax - less than nothing.
Pepco Holdings (-57.6% tax rate)
General Electric (-45.3%)
DuPont (-3.4%)
Verizon (-2.9%)
Boeing (-1.8%)
Honeywell (-0.7%)
280 large and profitable corporations contributed $216 million to Congressional campaigns over four election cycles and got nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars in tax breaks. That’s a terrific investment.
Bank of America committed foreclosure fraud, whistleblowers have stated in affidavits that they were “told to lie” to customers, continued to deceive homeowners before foreclosing on them, and flipped customers to new servicing companies to invalidate previous homeowner agreements. It was bailed out by the government, and then paid no taxes on $4.4 billion in profit! In 2010, while BofA was negotiating a settlement deal for its foreclosure fraud, it paid nothing in taxes. Zero, on $17.2 billion in offshore earnings.
Its $4.1 billion tax break came on the heels of the bank’s taxpayer-funded bailout, immunity from prosecution for its criminal employees, and a cushy government settlement for its foreclosure fraud.
The amount of money US corporations are holding offshore is an estimated one trillion dollars! One building in the Cayman Islands, Ugland House, is the official location of 18,857 corporations. Ugland House’s distinction pales next to that of 1209 North Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware. According to one investigation, that address is home to 217,000 corporations. That’s because Delaware has very generous tax rules – and, as a result, is home to more than half of all the corporate subsidiaries in the United States. We don’t even know who owns some corporations, even though that makes it easier to evade taxes, dodge creditors, avoid paying alimony or child support, and even fund terrorism! Corporate interests are blocking disclosure rules
Rather than tax these profits, politicians are promoting a tax “repatriation” break that would let corporations “bring this money home” while paying even less than their currently low rates. The argument is that it would encourage domestic investment and create jobs. They tried that in 2004 and it didn’t create any jobs. In fact, corporations took the tax break and then fired thousands of people. What “repatriation” did do is line a lot of investors’ pockets.
“Entitlement reform,” for example, is merely a euphemism for gutting Social Security and Medicare. “Tax reform” means the current low rates for corporations would be made permanent, while eliminating many tax deductions in the name of “simplification.”
Organizations like “Fix the Debt” and “the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget” tell ordinary Americans they have to sacrifice even more to preserve corporate wealth! These organizations are using the heads of failed banks – people like Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs – to dispense “advice on the economy.” That’s like getting navigation tips from the captain of the Exxon Valdez.
Taken from here
While all the above is useful to expose the hypocrisy of capitalist enterprises about shared sacrifice and their contribution to it, as the current issue of the Socialist Standard writes "Let the various sections of the capitalist class argue amongst themselves over which of them should pay and how much to finance their state. As wage and salary workers we should concentrate on organising to end our status as mere bearers of a commodity used up in production."
Offshore tax havens cost the US $150 billion in lost tax revenue every year (via FACT Coalition). That’s $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. The “chained CPI” cut, proposed by President Obama and supported by Republicans, is projected to “save” a total of $122 billion to $130 billion over the same time period by denying benefits to seniors and disabled people. Politicians are demanding that ordinary people sacrifice earned benefits, while at the same time allowing corporations to avoid more than ten times as much in taxes.
Wells Fargo got $8 billion in tax breaks. Wells Fargo paid a negative tax rate of -1.4 percent between 2008 and 2010. Executives at its subsidiary Wachovia avoided indictment for laundering money for the Mexican drug cartels. We’re talking about crazed killers like “El Loco” and gangs like “Los Zetas” – gangs who cut people’s heads off and toss them out onto disco dance floors or display them in the town square. Wachovia bankers ignored repeated warnings from law enforcement officials, and continued to launder money for cartels that have murdered tens of thousands. no criminal indictments were handed down because, as a Senate investigator told Bloomberg News, “”There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure.”
Other huge corporations who paid negative tax - less than nothing.
Pepco Holdings (-57.6% tax rate)
General Electric (-45.3%)
DuPont (-3.4%)
Verizon (-2.9%)
Boeing (-1.8%)
Honeywell (-0.7%)
280 large and profitable corporations contributed $216 million to Congressional campaigns over four election cycles and got nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars in tax breaks. That’s a terrific investment.
Bank of America committed foreclosure fraud, whistleblowers have stated in affidavits that they were “told to lie” to customers, continued to deceive homeowners before foreclosing on them, and flipped customers to new servicing companies to invalidate previous homeowner agreements. It was bailed out by the government, and then paid no taxes on $4.4 billion in profit! In 2010, while BofA was negotiating a settlement deal for its foreclosure fraud, it paid nothing in taxes. Zero, on $17.2 billion in offshore earnings.
Its $4.1 billion tax break came on the heels of the bank’s taxpayer-funded bailout, immunity from prosecution for its criminal employees, and a cushy government settlement for its foreclosure fraud.
The amount of money US corporations are holding offshore is an estimated one trillion dollars! One building in the Cayman Islands, Ugland House, is the official location of 18,857 corporations. Ugland House’s distinction pales next to that of 1209 North Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware. According to one investigation, that address is home to 217,000 corporations. That’s because Delaware has very generous tax rules – and, as a result, is home to more than half of all the corporate subsidiaries in the United States. We don’t even know who owns some corporations, even though that makes it easier to evade taxes, dodge creditors, avoid paying alimony or child support, and even fund terrorism! Corporate interests are blocking disclosure rules
Rather than tax these profits, politicians are promoting a tax “repatriation” break that would let corporations “bring this money home” while paying even less than their currently low rates. The argument is that it would encourage domestic investment and create jobs. They tried that in 2004 and it didn’t create any jobs. In fact, corporations took the tax break and then fired thousands of people. What “repatriation” did do is line a lot of investors’ pockets.
“Entitlement reform,” for example, is merely a euphemism for gutting Social Security and Medicare. “Tax reform” means the current low rates for corporations would be made permanent, while eliminating many tax deductions in the name of “simplification.”
Organizations like “Fix the Debt” and “the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget” tell ordinary Americans they have to sacrifice even more to preserve corporate wealth! These organizations are using the heads of failed banks – people like Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs – to dispense “advice on the economy.” That’s like getting navigation tips from the captain of the Exxon Valdez.
Taken from here
While all the above is useful to expose the hypocrisy of capitalist enterprises about shared sacrifice and their contribution to it, as the current issue of the Socialist Standard writes "Let the various sections of the capitalist class argue amongst themselves over which of them should pay and how much to finance their state. As wage and salary workers we should concentrate on organising to end our status as mere bearers of a commodity used up in production."
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