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What the Top US Companies Pay In Taxes
theodp writes "If you've ever wondered how it's possible that you pay more to the IRS than General Electric, Forbes has an explanation. You, my friend, do not have the tax benefit of overseas operations. Microsoft, for example, has its overseas subsidiaries license software to its US parent company in return for handsome royalties that get taxed at lower overseas rates. Exxon limits its tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands that shelter cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan, and Abu Dhabi. As a result, of the $15B it paid in income taxes last year, Exxon paid none of it to Uncle Sam, and has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas. Likewise, GE has $84B in overseas income parked indefinitely outside the US. Now quit your carping and get back to filling out that 1040!"
Good for them. They're maximising what they do with their profits. Giving it to the government means it gets given to banks and incompetent businesses, or the military industrial complex to spend on a war on *insert something here*.
This is one more reason why countries are better than a single global government. If you screw the businesses in one country they can move to another.
I thought this was generally common knowledge.
Not the details, perhaps, but the tone of the summary and the bits of the article I read appear to imply this is some new discovery - that companies use tax havens as tax havens.
Or maybe it's just that British business is more tax-averse than those over the pond...
If you tax them, they move to India. Shareholders don't care.
Maybe the goverment should try spending less for a change.
These types of tricks should be unacceptable. Close the loops that allow this to happen, and let it be known that if you are going to do business in the US and benefit from our educated labor pool, infrastructure, markets, and resources you are going to pay taxes like everyone else. These shenanigans should demonstrate exactly why a corporation should not be treated as a legal person. They are immortal, and can skirt current law and tax codes by existing simultaneously in multiple places and jurisdictions at the same time.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Leo Gold: "Don’t believe me? It’s all in the numbers. For a hundred years, there’s been a conspiracy of plutocrats against ordinary people."
JC Denton: "Do you have a single fact to back that up?"
Leo Gold: "Number one: In 1945, corporations paid 50 percent of federal taxes. Now they pay about 5 percent. Number two: in 1900, 90 percent of Americans were self-employed; now it’s about two percent."
JC Denton: "So?"
Leo Gold: "It’s called consolidation. Strengthen governments and corporations, weaken individuals. With taxes, this can be done imperceptibly over time."
Fictional conspiracies aside - WTF?
We need to switch to a transaction tax like http://www.apttax.com/ This would make sure that corporations like those paid their fair share of the taxs.
I gave up after 5 or six slides - I have *never* seen that many ads on a non-game site.
These are the same companies that want you to buy "local" products. Patriotic crap. They pay where its cheap, I buy where its cheap.
*cough*end-scene-of-fight-club*cough*
The rich get richer, the poor, well, stay poor.
Nothing has changed since the times of Pareto...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilfredo_Pareto
(Take a look - the original '80/20' was 80% of the land was owned by 20% of the people)
These days, it's more like 90% of the world's wealth belongs to 10% of its population.
If you've got the money to have to worry about these things, then you can pay smart people to avoid tax.
Note I said avoid, (legal), not evade, which is not.
It is the duty of corporate officers to (legally) minimise tax burden.
It is the duty of governments to ensure equitable distribution of wealth, without discouraging wealth creation.
Guess who's doing a better job...
FTA: Those low-tax countries are almost anywhere but the U.S. "When you add in state taxes, the U.S. has the highest tax burden among industrialized countries,"
So, to attract tax payers, just lower the US taxes and those same companies (and maybe even non-US corps) will pull the same "shenanigans" to not pay the lower foreign taxes, but, rather, would make their earnings declaration in the US... whatever is cheaper, right?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I like the idea of a Value Added Tax over income tax.
Imagine we have two scenarios: The US with a 20% income tax (both personal and corporate) and one with a 20% sales tax (not the same as VAT, but for simplicity sake we will stick with sales tax). In both cases we have a competitor country with a 20% sales tax.
In each scenario, imagine a good that costs $100 to produce in each country if there were no taxes
In scenario 1, an item that would cost $100 to make in the United States costs more as labor costs more due to taxes. It also costs a bit more as there is a tax on the company to make. Now, they ship it overseas were trading partner levies a 20% tax on the consumption of that item.
In the same scenario, foreign trading partner builds the thing for $100, no tax on the company, no tax on the labor. They ship over here for less than the U.S. can sell it for. Basically the trading partner gets a competitive advantage and forces down the price of items sold in its borders. It makes its money off of the US corporation.
In scenario 2, there is equality between the trading partners.
Now, a VAT would have to allow for some type of "kick back" to lower income individuals due to the regressive nature of the tax. But overall, it would go a long way to helping our economy and balancing trade.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Don't click on that first link about GE's tax bill. It's worse than goatse.
Seriously, I think I'm going to throw up.
has its overseas subsidiaries license software to its US parent company in return for handsome royalties that get taxed at lower overseas rates
And thats only when you talk about taxes. How about foreign aid projects? Quote the job at domestic rates (it is a subsidy to local industry after all) then outsource the work to your subsidiary at half the cost. Funded internal projects: send your own managers to the offshore site to organise local implementation then invent reasons why the cost is going to rise. Hire consultants at the offshort site who actually work for you to siphon money out of the project. Put the operation on hold for the two days the Big Boss is on site. Keep him/her up all night with prostitutes, etc.
Endless fun.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
No, they don't. Companies already price all their products at the highest price the market will bear--- if they could raise their prices, they would have already done so. Corporate taxes generally hurt their profit margins, and to some extent the compensation and bonuses of their top executives.
Which is why they're so against them, incidentally. If corporate taxes mainly hurt the consumer, and had no negative effect on the corporation's executives or shareholders, they wouldn't care, and wouldn't exert all this effort trying to oppose and avoid them.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
And that is the western economy in a nutshell... well actually, that is the western economy up shit creek without a paddle.
I wonder what the romans thought just before their empire crumbled around them.
And don't worry, it ain't just the US. Holland was labelled a while ago as a tax-haven, while local companies dodge our taxes, how creepy can it get? If you drive across an industrial park, you quickly notice that almost nothing is being produced anymore. Everything is warehouses where boxes from China are shuffled around.
But don't worry, the knowledge and service industry will keep us all employed. The service industry like the banks. That need billions in government handouts to function (and this one wasn't the first) paid from taxes they don't pay themselves. Oh yeah, that is a long term plan.
But I have a very simple solution. No taxes without representation. Bill Gates and his tax dodging company no longer get police protection. Go ahead, do whatever you want with him. The tax payed systems of law enforcement are clearly not something he is willing to pay for.
Time to make it clear that being part of a country is an all or nothing deal. Don't like the tax rules, then piss off. Lets see how the likes of Microsoft and IBM really enjoy living in a tax shelter, with their families.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
..."What you tax, you get less of." According to legend, The Zhou Emperor (China, about 1100 B.C.E) laid a heavy tax on salt. Enterprising traders found they could dissolve 20 times the volume of salt in fermented soy. Since there was no tax on liquids, people became more accustomed to salting and preserving their foods in soy. Should the peasants have been "patriotic" and insisted on paying higher prices for the salt?
Lay a tax on items and services, and you will get less of those items and services; lay a tax on businesses and you will get less of those businesses. Yup, they will move to friendlier shores. (For those of you thinking about this, what are the implications for Health Care? Arithmetically, price controls are form of taxation, and the new Health Care Reform imposes both controls and taxes.)
At the present time, Americans in the USA have very favorable prices for petroleum products compared to the rest of the world. What would the cost of gasoline be in the USA if we had to pay taxes on all the oil revenues including the taxes on where the oil is produced? (My estimate is around 9.44 per gallon, YMMV.) Then consider the implications for the Chemical Industry and consumer products.
You want jobs? Jobs are provided by profitable businesses. The more profitable businesses there are, the more jobs available. The more jobs available, the more competition for qualified employees. The more competition for qualified employees, the better the wages, conditions and benefits. There are equilibrium points with in the system, but when non-productivity costs (like taxes) get too burdensome, it makes it profitable for business to put up with the hassles and expense of moving to those friendlier shores.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
I do not know if its this easy to setup a tax shelter anymore by just buying a PO Box in Bermuda. Maybe someone here on / could enlighten me on the new tax laws?
Personally, I feel that these companies are scum but at the same time I feel that they are doing this because our government is scum too for charging too much in corporate taxes. I would like to see lower corporate taxes to help small business out. Regardless if you think its fair that they should be taxed at all, the small guy in your community with his mom/pop coffee shop can not compete agaisn't Starbucks if he has to pay taxes while his competitors do not.
http://saveie6.com/
That makes no sense though. For example, farmers use a lot of land, yet their services are -very- valuable to humanity and on a whole they don't make too much money. It honestly takes no more power to protect and defend 1 acre of land as it does 4,000. The government should only be concerned with fraud and force.
People should be taxed in proportion to how much government they need. In general, people who own a lot of land are pretty self sufficient and don't need governmental assistance. Considering that the US is basically free from invasion and other threats, it makes no sense to tax people based on land, it simply doesn't add up. Someone living in an apartment owns no land, yet could very well be a huge drain on the government with welfare and other programs, yet they are paying nothing. Plus, there is -lots- of land available. Don't believe me? Take a drive through the Dakotas and Wyoming. While land may be at a premium in Europe or large cities, on a large scale, land is insanely abundant.
In short, people should pay for the government they use, as a whole, people who own more land use less government in the 21st century. When Henry George used his theory, you must remember the US government was handing out land left and right to railroad companies and getting other perks from the government. Georgism was a natural idea back then, more land meant you took more from the government. Today, that isn't the case.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Corporations have attained supercitizenship and are immune to many of the concerns of common citizens. What if the judicial system could find a company guilty of crimes to a degree that it could give the company the equivalent of a life sentence or a death sentence, or the equivalent of prison in general (with the government overseeing every aspect of the company's life)? That would keep them on their toes.
Joke's on you; I don't pay any taxes. They're all withheld by my employer. And Exxon doesn't pay any taxes; they raise their prices to offset the expense.
Now, which one am I joking about?
Here is all the text of the slides in a readable list.
No. 1: Wal-Mart Stores
Sales: $401 billion Pretax income: $20.9 billion Income taxes: $7.1 billion Tax rate: 34.2%
$1.2 billion of Wal-Mart Stores' taxes are international.
No. 2: ExxonMobil
Sales: $311 billion Pretax income: $35 billion Income taxes: $15 billion Tax rate: 47%
None of ExxonMobil's income taxes were paid in the U.S. In 2008 the company's income tax bill was $36 billion.
No. 3: Chevron
Sales: $172 billion Pretax income: $18.5 billion Income taxes: $8 billion Tax rate: 43%
Chevron paid $19 billion income tax in 2008. Of this year's taxes, just $200 million were paid in the U.S.
No. 4: General Electric
Sales: $157 billion
Pretax income: $10.3 billion
Income taxes: (-$1.1 billion)
Tax rate: N/A
GE's financial services unit, GE Capital, keeps the overall tax bill so low. Over the last two years, GE Capital has displayed an uncanny ability to lose lots of money in the U.S. and make lots of money overseas, where tax rates are lower.
No. 5: ConocoPhillips
Sales: $152 billion Pretax income: $10 billion Income taxes: $5 billion Tax rate: 51%
ConocoPhillips paid $13 billion in taxes in 2008.
No. 6: AT&T
Sales: $123 billion
Pretax income: $19 billion
Income taxes: $6.2 billion
Tax rate: 32.4%
AT&T's executive officers are eligible to bill the company $14,000 a year for their own income tax preparations.
No. 7: Bank of America
Sales: $120 billion
Pretax income: $4.4 billion
Income taxes: (-$1.9 billion)
Tax rate: N/A
How did Bank of America not pay any taxes on $4.4 billion in income? Because of deductions like $860 million in tax-exempt income, $670 million in low-income housing credits and a $600 million loss on shares of foreign subsidiaries. With a provision for credit losses of $49 billion, Bank of America probably won't be paying taxes for a long time.
No. 8: Ford Motor
Sales: $118 billion
Pretax income: $3 billion
Income taxes: $69 million
Tax rate: 2.3%
Ford's tax rate is so low because of past years' losses from U.S. operations.
No. 9: Hewlett-Packard
Sales: $115 billion
Pretax income: $9.4 billion
Income taxes: $1.75 billion
Tax rate: 18.6%
HP's low tax rate is due to lower tax rates in foreign countries. The company says in its annual report that President Obama's proposals to end tax deferrals on international operations would mean a big tax hike.
No. 10: Berkshire Hathaway
Sales: $112 billion
Pretax income: $11.5 billion
Income taxes: $3.5 billion
Tax rate: 30%
No. 11: JPMorgan Chase
Sales: $100 billion
Pretax income: $16 billion
Income taxes: $4.4 billion
Tax rate: 27.5%
Chief Executive Jamie Dimon has spoken out against an Obama proposal to levy a special tax on banks to recoup bailout costs. "Using tax policy to punish people is a bad idea," said Dimon. "All businesses tend to pass costs on to customers."
No. 12: Verizon
Sales: $108 billion
Pretax income: $11.6 billion
Income taxes:
I don't suppose anyone here knows squat about the double taxation trap corporations face. Oh no, it's much more fun to rant and flame when you're uninformed.
In other news, large, politically connected organizations have been found to manipulate laws to their own advantage.
SSC
I read this and say: of-course. Governments are captured by private corporate interests and this is the obvious outcome - corporations are your governments. Do you think a King pays taxes? Why would he pay to himself?
When you pay your taxes, when the government prints money, when government sells treasury bills, when private corporations get privilege of getting money at near 0% from the government, when private corporations get all of your money in bailouts and you get nothing, ask yourself this question: why should you continue playing by the rules that are set up to screw you?
Stop paying taxes altogether, not like anything will change, they'll print the difference.
You can't handle the truth.
im sure you all have heard of lobbyists right? you think these politicians are going to tax the people that pay them? not happening. imo the problem is bribing a politician being legal as long as it is called "lobbying"
You are 100% correct, but you forgot a even better benefit for running operations outside the US. The new health care bill wants to fine you if you are lucky enough to exceed 50 employees. Why take that hit much smarter to just hire off shore labor and worry about none of that .
Got Code?
Corporations will tell you that the US has the highest tax rate, but there are all these loop holes so the US actually has the lowest tax rate. There should be a minimum tax rate for corporations so that after they do all their loop holes, it can only get them down to 20% or something like that, not to zero.
They will say they can't afford it, but that is BS. If you apply it equally, then it has zero impact on competitive advantage. But every corporation would receive massive benefits from it as their pool of workers got healthier and better educated and the roads got better and telecommunications got better and so on. The government is way underfunded in the US, and it spends a ton of money on weapons, so it's even worse.
Don't be envious, be aspirational!
It's kind of odd, just the other day I posted here about how the US has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world, hence why we pay less income tax and the cost of living is higher. The effective tax rate for businesses is around 40%, deductions included. In fact checking my post, I came across this chart, which indicated that corporations only provide 14% of the total tax revenue, while individuals provide 44%.
Never having studied economics nor tax law, at the time I figured that was more related to businesses passing their tax burden to the share holders, who paid it as income tax. But now it's apparent that a fair chunk of this is just other countries being a little more beholden to their corporate overlords and letting their citizens shoulder more of the tax burden. I suppose that's the free market taking advantage of the complexity in tax law.
The oil companies such as Exxon get the huge tax break as a way to subsidize the Saudis. In order to get the oil, the Saudis wanted a larger percentage than the American oil companies could provide, so the US Government engineered a tax break on "foreign taxes" for them. This allows the Saudis to make up the difference through taxes, which the oil companies write off on US taxes.
Corporations may have some of the rights of people, but they're just pieces of paper. While corporations run lean, their employees get hit, they pay taxes on offices, land, purchases and just about everything else that we do. When they pay their employees, their employees pay income taxes. When they sell their goods, states collect income taxes. The government has made very sure it gets its cut every step of the way. Taxing the corporation means that they make less goods, pay their employees less (well, ludicrous bonuses aside...), and will ultimately be less productive. /devils advocate
Those crafty politicians have found ways to nickel and dime EVERYBODY and EVERYTHING (in a way) to make sure that they still have a job next election.
they will just move the profitable operation overseas.
Tax the rich individual instead.
New Economic Perspectives
People should be taxed in proportion to how much government they need.
That'll never happen. RIAA and MPAA won't stand for a 100% tax rate.
Fixed that for you.
GENERATION 24: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
To me, this screams for a simplification of tax law. Here's a thought:
Step 1: Eliminate corporate taxes. (and as another commenter opined, eliminate the ludicrous notion of corporate person-hood while you're at it)
Now, once you've done step 1, guess what? The argument about capital gains being double-taxation disappears. So:
Step 2: Eliminate any distinction between capital gains and any other form of income in terms of taxation. Treat all income as just income.
The big corporations aren't paying corporate taxes anyway, and all it really does is incentivize them to dump their profits into advertising to increase their market cap.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Go ahead, people, cheer for the corporations. None of them are doing anything for you. Your government supplies your drinking water, builds your roads, responds in the event of disaster, and much, much more.
Not true. Wal-Mart and Home Depot did a better job than the gov't during Katrina. Say what you want about Wal-Mart's product sourcing but you have to admit they know more about delivering goods to remote corners of the country than anyone else. Interestingly, Wal-Mart was also a pioneer (1970s) of computerizing inventory and sales and in data mining. Wal-Mart monitors weather reports and when severe storms are *predicted* moves products that history shows will be in demand under such circumstances from unaffected regions to affected regions. When you see the Red Cross (also non-gov't by the way) handing out bottled water keep in mind that Wal-Mart probably delivered that water. FEMA is also supposedly turning to Walt-Mart for help with disaster logistics.
--
Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN
This is precisely why we need Fair Tax. Just think what it would do to the economy if all the money languishing outside the US is brought in to work and create jobs and investments right here at home.
No you aren't. You pay taxes when you collect the money.
FTA
Seriously, how many fucktards does this employ at both ends of this bureaucratic circle jerk? my brain hurts.
If a company is forced to pay more tax, it will simply pass those costs along to the consumer ultimately.
Sort of. In the end, everything a corporation pays out has to come from their customers. But since corporate tax rates are based on their profits rather than revenues, the corporation that makes less profit (is poorly managed) pays less tax than the one that makes higher profits (better management).
At first, this would seem to be 'fair' (i.e progressive, in that the 'wealthier' entity pays more tax), corporate profits are very easily manipulated. Corporations can incur expenses that reduce their profits by having foreign subsidiaries in low tax regimes charge high rates for their 'services'. The summary mentions one example of this: Microsoft overseas divisions charging the US corporation licensing fees. Question: When I load $10K into a suitcase or a bunch of diamonds in a little bag and carry it out of the country, Customs damned well wants to know about it. When those s/w licenses magically moved from here to there, there was nothing tangible that was carried. No license sniffing dogs alerted US officials that billions of dolars of property had just crossd the border (yet another arguing point for the reality of IP).
The basic unfairness of the tax laws is that corporations are free to structure their income and expenses in practically any way they want to manage their tax burden. Meanwhile, the individual is afforded no such expense deductions. If I were a corporation, everything I spent during the year to maintain myself (my food, my housing, my transportation) would be an expense and my profit would be the increase in my savings account at the end of the year.
Have gnu, will travel.
They don't... even when they do. They just take what they pay the Uncle Same onto the price of what goods and services they sell us, and WE pay the taxes. Doesn't matter how much or how little it is... we pay it.
The Shareholders may end up paying something... at least if they get any dividends. But that isn't the corporation.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Now you know why america has gone to hell in a hand basket.
Except that the taxes raise all corporate prices. Which is why they can raise them. Their competitors will too, to pay their taxes.
I don't expect morality, equality, consistency, or justice from the law. I expect only legality.
Exxon is not trying to prevent climate change legislation. Several years ago I heard an Exxon executive arguing in favor of cap and trade.
Exxon is not stupid. They have made sure that if cap and trade becomes law, their profits will be protected. They have developed carbon sequestration technology which will allow them to continue to sell oil without polluting. Sure, carbon sequestration is expensive (but cheaper than wars or health care). However, with cap and trade everyone will be forced to do carbon sequestration, and Exxon knows how to do it better than most other groups. Also, keep in mind that Exxon has businesses besides oil and that they have the cash to simply purchase any "green" competition.
So why do people accuse Exxon of funding global warming skeptics? Most likely Exxon is backing both sides. Large corporations will back all sides in any political competition, to make sure that whoever wins rewards them afterwards.
Anyway, do not blame corporate profiteering for global warming. Corporations would be just as willing to make their profits off of "green" energy. They will follow the government's guidance. It is congress that is sitting there and doing nothing.
Simon's Rock College
So the F what! More taxes for companies mean worse pay and higher cost of living! I agree with Bob9113.
why don't we hear it from the right?
corporations are:
completely unpatriotic. in fact, as this tax situation shows, they are basically anti-patriotic: their actions actively undermine the country
corporaitons work against individual rights, liberties, privacy, and freedoms
they threaten to hollow out the country into a corporatocracy, they actively turn your representatives into shills for corporate interests, not interests of the citizens
we have been hearing these howls on the left for decades
but how come we don't hear it from the right?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The article has failed.
How much tax the big corporations pay to the IRS is only one side of the coin.
The article fails to look at how much the big corporations getting FREE MONEY from the government.
There are so many FREE MONEY the government is giving to the big corporations. From loans to Wall Street firms to subsidies for "promoting American products overseas" to incentive to encourage "American Business to open branches abroad".
Most importantly, NONE OF THOSE FREE MONEY is available to you and me, or the Joe Sixpack on the street.
It's only available to the corporations.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Given how so many people get riled up over patriotism and the like, why don't we point out that these companies not paying their fair share to help America through what amounts to a shell game undermines all the rest of us. If you've got a group of friends ordering pizza and one guy tells the group that he'd totally be good for it but he doesn't have any money, all his money is being held by an offshore company operated by a wholly owned subsidiary that's completely owned by him, you'd tell him to fuck off and go get his own pizza and stop mooching off everyone else.
Alright, not really. April 15 is just around the corner, and we all have to pay. But really, reading this string has been like placing the head of Planned Parent Hood and the Pope in a room. A lot of noise and arguments that someone can predict. But with that being said, if I had to choose a side right now, I would say "tax 'em less so I can have a job".
A good first step would be to make interest paid by corporations non tax deductible.
There are three ways a company can pay for its capital. It can pay out dividends, borrow and pay interest, or buy back its own stock. All should get equivalent tax treatment.
This would make leveraged buyouts and private equity transactions much rarer, because those are basically equity-to-debt conversions. If the tax advantage of debt payments over dividends went away, we'd see less dept-heavy corporate structures and more dividends. This leads to sounder companies more able to weather bad times.
I would EXPECT a corporation to pass along income taxes to the consumer. It's called BUSINESS. Something 99% of the youth, who have been brainwashed in government schools, to hate, along with the Constitution, duty, honor, god and everything else that made the USA great.
What good is $10,000,000 overseas when you live in the US? You only benefit when it comes back, and that is when you pay. Just like the corporations.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Well yes, California is so messed up that their experts are blaming budget problems for the entire state on prison officers asking for more money instead of the real mismanagement. It will take a major disaster to wake both sides of government up there - however that is not an argument about governments in general.
You might as well have mentioned Albania. From all around the world we look at California and how it threw away the silicon valley advantage.
That doesn't change that the taxes have to come from somewhere - and remember that if Exxon or Hollywood pay something that's potentially less of a burden for you.
No company pays taxes. They just take your money and give it to the government.
they actively turn your representatives into shills for corporate interests, not interests of the citizens
Actually, our representatives turn themselves into shills for corporate interests because they lack the integrity to say "sorry, protecting your business model isn't my job." Better yet, it's our fault for constantly turning more and more power over to the federal government and not paying attention to what they do with it. We also give corporations power over us by not taking responsibility for our own livelihoods. We demand low-risk, low-responsibility jobs and job security and guaranteed health care and retirement benefits, etc and now most of us CAN'T actually make a living on our own. We can only do the jobs prescribed to us by the corporations that employ us. What do you expect to happen when we actively give up responsibility for our lives to our employers and to our government?
It will annoy a lot to say it but really everyone they look up to at the moment is for sale and nobody is paying them for that message.
Pay him enough and a cocaine addled shock jock will come out with "there's a war on people and that corporation is profiteering from no bid contracts, making money out of the blood of our boys without paying a cent to the US for taxes to help our boys fight."
Without payment - silence, until eventually the right get someone they respect who isn't for sale.
They'll either be way over the top or silence with no middle ground.
Um, the first link in the summary is just that - the right-leaning Forbes magazine complaining about big corporations not paying U.S. taxes. The article starts off with: "As you work on your taxes this month, here's something to raise your hackles: Some of the world's biggest, most profitable corporations enjoy a far lower tax rate than you do--that is, if they pay taxes at all." But instead of degenerating into hatred for corporations as you did, it tries to probe the reasons why these companies do it, and points out why some proposed solutions may not work. I'm guessing you disagreed with their reasons and therefore classified it as being for these corporations dodging taxes, rather than against it.
Regardless, people on the right do complain about corporations dodging taxes. Very few people on the right are multi-millionaire owners and boardmembers of fortune 500 companies. Most of them are small business owners or part-owners/investors who don't have the luxury of opening offices offshore to take advantage of accounting tricks to avoid taxes. Their businesses have to pay the full burden of U.S. federal and state corporate tax rates, which are among the highest in the world. So there's a sizable group on "the right" who want sensible reform of tax laws (mostly simplification, and elimination of numerous exceptions which almost exclusively benefit the largest companies). But just because they don't believe as you do that all corporations are evil, that's no reason to conclude "the right" is saying nothing about the matter.
I am not American so please educate me. You're saying an individual would be able to sue Exxon and win? Won't Exxon (etc) just throw a million dollars on the table and say "we can afford this for lawyers, how about you?" and win by default? A million (or ten million) to them is just small change and they won't even blink.
I understand that several noble people have stood up to major corporations and won but this seems to usually be at the cost of giving up their job, using all their life time savings, ruining their social and personal lives, spending half a dozen years living on the breadline and learning to be a lawyer in the local public library ten hours a day. Technically it is possible but the odds are loaded in favour of the corporation. They have more power than people. For the vast majority of us this just isn't feasible, we have to go to work 9-5 and raise kids etc. We can't afford to sacrifice our lives and just have to put up with the proverbial bulldozer company pouring waste fluids into our yards when it happens..
we have been hearing these howls on the left for decades
but how come we don't hear it from the right?
Because both sides are pretty much the same pack of assholes, neither one of them really believes in personal rights or liberty.
Take drug laws as a perfect example- the left hate them because they are government control over your private life.
Take gun laws as a perfect example- the right hate them because they are government control over your private life.
That's just one pair of examples. You can go through the national party stances on a pile of issues and see where there really aren't any "ideals" on either side about how government should or should not operate in general. We've ended up at a point in time where there are arguments over how government should handle specific issues, but the ideas (for example) of "big vs. small" government or "personal rights vs national rights" went away a long time ago.
I don't know where you get your info from but Exxon did pay taxes to the US Gov, according to Business Week http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/may2008/db2008051_596535.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_news+%2B+analysis & the Securities & Exchange Commission filings Exxon paid an effective tax rate of 34% to the US Gov in 2007 which is 1% below the Corp tax in the US and well above the 24% Avg paid by all Corps in US.
It is funny how the CO that pays the highest rate in the US is accused of not paying ANY taxes and at the same time is harped on for overseas operations that they are forced into in large part because they can't drill here so they have to built massive operations overseas to provide oil to the US and in some cases having to pay Russia up to 90% of revenues generated by the oil they drill.
But let us all be honest, Exxon really does not pay any taxes at all, you are right, we do, the consumers! To top that off the Gov collects in taxes 4 times as much per gallon of gas sold in the US than the Oil COs make in profits.
I would be interested in learning one industry in the US that the Gov collects more taxes from than Gas and Oil?
Who needs WMD, just need 100000000 pitch forks to poke the eyes out of all the politicians, and lawyers and CEOs.
Infact, maybe us people have more power now, just stop working, stop paying taxes, govt gets zero, ahhahhhaa.
The govt works for us.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Yes, of course they don't have to care overseas, because those countries do not tax employer-paid healthcare benefits to their employees, right? It' would never happen in Spain, France, England... all the money you pay to an employee there goes straight to their pockets, since they have no taxes, or if they have taxes, they are extremely low.
Or not, and the only places where your argument is actually true are third world countries and tax havens.
Lower it to 0% and they'll come running. No reason to tax corporate income at all.
Naively optimistic.
For that matter, no reason to tax income at all.
There are alternatives to be sure but ANY tax scheme you come up with will have trade offs. There is no perfect tax system.
Tax something that can't run to another country like real estate. That'll become a lot more valuable with 0% taxes on income.
Your argument is that we should inflate the price of and tax burden on real estate instead of having an income tax? It would solve some problems but create many more.
Some places do most of their taxation based on real estate. Hong Kong for instance which manages to do it because of their somewhat unique circumstances but not without problems. Problem is you are basically tying your nation's ability to tax to a single cyclical industry (real estate) instead of the entire economy. Works great when the real estate market is hot and tax revenues crater massively when the real estate market cools off. Asset price bubbles become a HUGE problem. Our current fiscal crisis would be FAR worse if the US relied solely on tax revenues from real estate. There is a reason you diversify your stock portfolio and the same thing applies to sources of government revenue. Do you really want to eliminate that much diversification in sources of tax revenues? I think you haven't really thought this through.
Another problem is that it is very easy these days to locate facilities elsewhere. There is a reason not a lot of manufacturing takes place in Hong Kong or Manhattan any more. Price of land is too expensive. Admittedly those are extreme examples but companies will make decisions about where to locate because of a single dollar per square foot in cost. Drive up the price of real estate and companies will locate where real estate is cheap. Companies will decentralize massively if there is enough tax savings to do so. Remember that labor in the US isn't especially cheap either.
Because here in the USA we impose taxes on _earning_ money, no wonder why American businesses large and small are moving both blue-collar and white-collar jobs out of the USA, corporate headquarters included! No wonder why we have problems with unemployment.
Maybe it's time to completely rethink our national taxation system and switch to taxing consumption instead. This is the gist of FairTax (H.R. 25/S. 296--yes, it's a real bill in Congress) that would end all forms of income taxation--along with repealing the 16th Amendment--in favor of a singular 23% consumption tax, with a "prepayment" once a month to every legal household in the USA to pay for the consumption tax up to the Federally-defined poverty level. Note that this tax does not apply to business-to-business sales, sales of used goods (including sales of existing homes), and college tuition.
By eliminating the entire current income tax system in favor of FairTax, we get these huge benefits:
1) We save ourselves somewhere between US$350 and US$500 BILLION per year in income tax compliance costs.
2) Congress can no longer use the income tax code to favor or punish financially even the smallest constituency--the most insidious form of corruption in the USA right now.
3) American residents and businesses will no longer need to hide their liquid assets outside the USA to keep them out of the reach of the IRS. That means the US$2 TRILLION now participating in the illegal cash-only underground economy and US$13 TRILLION in liquid assets sitting in offshore financial centers beyond US borders--both done as income tax dodges--return to the USA, providing a US$15 TRILLION liquidity boost to the US financial system that would start a new economic boom and then some--the world's largest "private bailout."
4) American businesses will no longer need to outsource jobs beyond US borders as a tax dodge. That could mean millions upon millions of jobs return to the USA under better tax circumstances, immediately lowering the unemployment rate.
5) Foreign companies will do a land rush to expand US operations, since the USA is now the world's largest legal income tax haven.
6) Shipping companies would quickly register their ships under the US flag, since there is no more taxes on the income earned from shipping for a US-flagged ship. That could mean hundreds of thousands of new and repatriated blue-collar jobs as new ships are now constructed and repaired at US ports free from income taxation.
So what are we waiting for?
You make the mistake of thinking that only Republicans are in the pockets of the corporations. NEWSFLASH! Politicians with a D behind their name are corrupt as well!
NONE of them represent US anymore. Vote third party. The republicrats have to be taken down.
You, my friend, can't have the "benefit of overseas tax operations". Although both you and the corporation are "persons" under the law, the corporation doesn't have to pay taxes on its worldwide income, while individuals do. So, it doesn't matter whether you move to Monaco or the Bermudas, you still need to pay taxes on everything you make.
Every year, Californians pay many billions more in federal income tax than California receives in benefits. In fact, a large part of the federal budget is financed by the liberal coastal states, while conservative and Republican states get more than they put in.
If California received its fair share of the federal budget, there would be no financial problems in the state.
When are people going to get it through their heads that corporations NEVER pay taxes? They just collect them from us in the form of higher prices and pass them along to the Government, sometimes. It gives legislators a free pass to pretend they are taxing someone else and entreat us to entitlements and freebies that we are in fact paying for ourselves, then expect reciprocation in the form of votes. We should just end corporate taxation and stop playing silly shell games with our money.
That's what the olympic-sized pool filled with sharks is for.
Don't forget the frikkin laser beams!
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
Ah yes, good old "Voodoo Economics" at it's finest.
Sure, every time it's been tried, the country spirals into a massive recession, unemployment goes through the roof, and banks start failing left and right, but hey, that's just a coincidence. Sure, every credible economist in the country has long ago derided the notion, but hey, what do they know? Quick, find me a dead horse!
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant