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IRS Auditing Google
theodp writes "Bloomberg reports that the IRS is auditing how Google shifted profits offshore to avoid taxes. According to Bloomberg, Google cuts its tax bill by about $1 billion a year using a technique that allocates profits to a unit managed out of a law firm in Bermuda, where there is no corporate income tax. In 2009, the most recent year for which records are available, this subsidiary collected 4.34 billion euros (about $6.1 billion) in royalties from a Google unit in the Netherlands. A spokesman for Google, whose stated mission is 'to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful,' called the IRS probe 'a routine inquiry' and declined to comment further."
Hmm, this is well known for a long time, and only NOW the IRS is getting around to auditing them?
I think Google just pissed off the wrong politician somehow.
Methinks their goody two shoes nature finally rubbed some corporation the wrong way.
I assume the reason they don't close these tax loopholes is because they're the same loopholes used by senators, congressmen, etc.
No sig today...
I wonder if publicly funded schools like Berkley and an (initially) publicly funded network like the internet helped Google in any way.
Nahhh.. clearly Google's success is owed entirely to the Irish subsidiary that owns their IP, and the Dutch Oven they use to assist their tax evasion scheme.
I'm waiting to find out that I paid more than Google in taxes.
If only I could pull something so crazy off with my own income, shipping it to two different countries to avoid paying taxes.
When I worked at PMC Sierra, on the cusp of the bubble, there was a tool that would let you look up any employee or do a search on various fields in the HR records. We were always fascinated that there was exactly one employee whose address was in Bermuda. We always imagined her job consisted solely of ferrying briefcases of cash from one bank to another. Note, we had no design or manufacturing capability anywhere in the Carribean nor any customers there.
Why are they picking on Google instead of someplace like, for instance, Koch Industries? Or News Corp? Or any of the other big companies pulling the infamous Double Dutch accounting tricks?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Google's probably got nothing to worry about. They've been doing this for a while. So has Microsoft. And Facebook. And probably most other large companies. Most of this falls under something called transfer pricing. Which is a global problem that you will find anywhere from China to Britain to Argentina.
... oh, right, I'm poor. We pay taxes. Corporations and people rich enough to afford shifty accountants don't. And, really, what motivation do my representatives have to change this situation? Their soft money doesn't come from me and my fellow citizens are too stupid, too easily misled and too illiterate to vote someone who would change this into office.
It's not quite right for this article to make it sound like a solely Google problem. It's far far larger than that. In the end, Google's got enough of the highest paid lawyers and accountants that this audit should turn up just about nothing.
Hmmm, maybe I'll just transfer all my profits to Bermuda
My work here is dung.
This, unfortunately, is a very common way for corporations to avoid taxes. The rules to decide which country "earned" a particular chunk of income are inherently complicated (with little way to simplify them), as there are plenty of legitimate reasons for part of a company to owe a foreign subsidiary money. It's a constant cat-and-mouse game between corporations and the IRS chasing this money around.
It's a complicated problem with no good answers. (Though you would never know it to listen to people on either end of the political spectrum... on one end you have people saying we should "eliminate loopholes", betraying their ignorance of why the problem exists to begin with. On the other end you have people that argue that corporations should pay no income tax since they spend so much effort complying (or fighting) with tax laws, but offer no way to make up that lost revenue, or volunteer cuts.)
Freudian slip?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/13/us-usa-tax-repatriation-idUSTRE79C71820111013
Yep... this would be such a GREAT stimulus for jobs..
For companies to pay their fair share of tax in their own country or is that crazy talk ?
I'm waiting to find out that I paid more than Google in taxes.
It's not just Google, here's a place to start. The problem is larger than that as some of the largest companies (Boeing, Ebay, GE) spend more money lobbying politicians than paying taxes.
My work here is dung.
In case you were wondering, this legal tax evasion technique is called the "Double Irish".
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Double_Irish_Arrangement
Google is a publicly traded company. They have to be audited every quarter simply for that reason. Every publicly traded company has to be independently audited every quarter. I doubt IRS will find anything Google can't.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I like Scott Adam's take:
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-12-28/
Information from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_Arrangement#Dutch_Sandwich
It's quite common, and is done by a *lot* of companies
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
Well if the IRS is going after Google, then there are quite a few more companies that they will be going after as well because about every fortune 500 company is in Bermuda for tax reasons. I was over there recently and let me tell you something. Bermuda is overpriced and it's not that good of a vacation place, but more importantly is that it's loaded to the gills with money from the USA. Google is following a corporate tax model, and they are being picked on for doing what everyone else is doing.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Microsoft was doing spectacular tax transfers for a decade through Ireland. Now that other places have joined the race to the bottom in terms of throwing tax loopholes at big companies, Microsoft has "diversified".
Hint: Remember how Ballmer was saying that the Skype purchase wouldn't impact Microsoft because the funds were being repatriated from elsewhere? How do you think those billions in "loose change" got there in the first place? You "park" them elsewhere until you can bring them back onshore at the absolute lowest impact to your operation.
I run a small business.
Oh the irony.
The question shouldn't be who can or should pay more taxes, it should be how can we reign in a government out of control when it comes to spending.
Really? Let's say for a moment that your small business was selling advertising through clicks on advertisements on the internet. Now, you figure out your taxes and charge your customers that. But somehow, Google keeps undercutting that price point. How do they do it? Oh, right "double Irish" and "dutch sandwich" tax loopholes. You don't make enough money to set up a shell office in Ireland or Netherlands to funnel sales through? Too bad, you'll forever be figuring in more taxes than Google into your price since you can't take advantage of these bullshit tax loopholes.
I agree the government is way out of control on spending. But you don't have a lick of business sense if you're disagreeing with me on what is fair for taxation in this situation. It flat out ruins your competitiveness as a small business and there's a reason we have laws that protect the competitiveness of the small guys. Just because they compete on an international level shouldn't give them the right to beat local businesses into the ground -- let alone enjoy the American infrastructure that is paid for with taxes while avoiding the same taxes!
My work here is dung.
The offshoring of profits needs to end. Google is doing it because it saves on their tax bill. Microsoft does it too, and most banks. I remember seeing a program on TV that interviewed a man who cut the lawn of banks in the Grand Cayman Islands. There were over 350 (different corporate) banks on the island, but it was difficult for the locals to find banking services because there was only a local credit union serving the island. Zero corporate taxes means profits aren't taxed. I remember hearing about how Microsoft offshored money to Ireland and paid several hundred million less in taxes (or even shifting its (official for tax purposes) headquarters to Nevada to avoid paying tax in Washington State. Its a big loophole that could fund school for 50 million American kids, but the Republicans and Tea Party folk are good with 5 people who have a 3-5 billion in the bank, getting a new superyacht *and* redo all of the properties in the Hamptons *every year* instead of every 2 years.
Regardless of whether this is just normal corporate practice how does this sit with the 'Do No Evil' motto?
Personally I'd avoid paying any tax I could, but then I've not portrayed myself as anything other than a normal individual. Google, through their motto, have set themselves a higher bar. To me this shows that the pressures of being a public company have made the halo slip a little,
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
You need to take tax 101. Really.
Methinks their goody two shoes nature finally rubbed some corporation the wrong way.
Don't drink, don't smoke, what do you do?
// Hang on, this isn't Fark
/// Who cares, slashie slashie
Don't drink, don't smoke, what do you do?
Subtle innuendos follow
Must be large scale multi-billion dollar tax evasion.
/ Obscure?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
We should have a system based on what you spend not what you earn. Combine that with proper trade tariffs and the corps will be paying their taxes or they wont be doing business in America.
"For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice" -- God
Completely waiving tax by corporations isn't a solution either. How is that, in any way, fair to companies that have not incorporated in a way that would allow them to avoid tax? (i.e. your average small business.) Due their corporate "personhood", a corporation involves a certain fixed amount of perfectly-justified administrative and legal overhead that is untenable for many small businesses.
We do collect a substantial amount of corporate income tax, even if that is far less than the official rate.
I prefer to say "they have failed to convince Congress" to write a tax exception/grant that is applicable to the methods they have available for protecting their profits.
As in, our entire tax system is a sham to benefit the big three, politicians, big corporations, and unions. Much of the laws passed in this country serve those same three interest.
So when people go off on a tirade about corporations avoiding taxes or not paying enough there a few things they need to consider.
1) NO CORPORATION PAYS ANY TAXES. - They only collect taxes for the government in an indirect taxation scheme used to prevent the average man from fully realizing their true tax burden.
2) The tax system servers only the politicians and those in their favor.
There is no complicated problem, it is a simple problem. We have a tax system which has far too many rules. The rules exist to obfuscate the system to the point that the population does not comprehend the taxes they pay. It also allows for actions like we are seeing with the IRS which are simply shake downs which I bet will mysteriously fixed within a year or so with some new tax law
While H.Cain's proposal is a bit simple and not well defined; claiming he will let us "know" in a week, it does have one thing we are desperately missing, clarity. I really don't like the idea of giving Washington access to a National sales tax but the idea of low taxes, no loopholes, and no double taxation are marvelous.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Under W, large amount of tax breaks were put in place. However, they actually encouraged offshoring. At the same time, other tax changes were put in place that made it easy for companies like Google, MS, Apple, etc to shift profits offshore. This needs to stop.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I like Google. Really like them, but this is good.
While the off shore practice they utilize isn't uncommon for large corporation, it is wrong.
Double Irish and Dutch Sandwich, and other loopholes need to be closed. If it means putting a company I like in the hot seat, so be it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you believe that every system has flaws, then you might be able to see when it may fail. For example, the income tax system has always been ham handed. Those who understood it well enough could always slip between the regulations to avoid some or all of it. In the early days, about 90 years ago, most people ignored them. In the 1940s, they passed payroll withholding and started collecting from those who were employed by others.
When most of the revenues were coming from a large "middle class" the system worked because it was easier to pay the government than to pay a tax attorney to find the cracks. People who were really rich could still afford to pay tax attorneys to minimize or limit their taxes, but it was a relatively small percentage of federal income tax revenues.
But as wealth began to concentrate, an industry of bright financial and legal professionals flourished, allowing more income to be shielded from the IRS. The rich, who got richer, weighed the cost of the tax verses the cost of testing the tax avoidance in tax court and decided the best return was "playing in the gray." The IRS has no choice but to go to tax court when someone challenges them. They do not have enough people to fight every rich person or company. Often, the well-paid lawyers of the taxpayers are better versed on the law than the civil servant IRS lawyers. As the rich get richer, they influence tax laws to gain a greater advantage. Eventually you have a society of people who are either too poor to pay much tax or a few too rich to need to pay tax. That is when the tax system fails. Frankly, no tax system can succeed when the money is too closely held by a few.
The irony is that we tax productivity. Imagine a company going to its most productive people and cutting their pay as they worked harder and better. There is a better way to collect federal revenue -- http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2011/09/02/guest-post-income-tax-alternative/ .
I'm all for getting rid of tax loopholes, exemptions, deductions, tax credits, etc. but one of the biggest problems with getting rid of them is there are entire industries that exist only because these exceptions exists. For example, CPA's, accountants, auditors, the IRS!!! If you get rid of all exceptions and go to a simple flat tax rate, you instantly have destroyed thousands of business and caused I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of people to lose their job. Which politician in their right mind (i.e. wants to be elected or re-elected) would want to be responsible for adding to the unemployment problem in the US right now?
A Dollar says that Google management has major sympathies towards the Occupy [movement].
Like Warren Buffet employing various tax avoidance strategies while arguing that his taxes should be raised?
Skip 1
2 has shown not to work.
3 I see what you are going for, but when a company is breaking even, it would kill them.
4 because 3 is impractical, if not destructive, 4 is invalid
5 I would argue for making that tariff only on good imported from countries that don't meet are federal worker guidelines.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
To seeing GE, Apple, Oracle, IBM all audited.
I don't know what would be worse, if this gets modded as funny or insightful.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
"Otherwise US will spend it on wall street instead of their own taxpayers anyway. "
What does that even mean? are you referring to the loan the US gave out to prevent the economy form getting worse? they one that's been paid back?
"taxes I expect something in return. "
Are you telling me you get nothing? no roads, law enforcement, fire dept, military.. nothing? Wow that's bad, but her in the US we have a pretty good infrastructure, and many other benefits from being taxed.
"Unfortunately I can't find one public dentist to take care of me on my health insurance, which I'm also paying every month "
So your taxes don't include public health care? ok, that's a good point.
I don't know why your insurances isn't excepted by dentists. Sounds pretty crappy.
Google , and all the companies doing this, need to be made to stop. Good infrastructure and a pretty damn honest system is why they can have Google, and they should pay.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The Government Accountability Office knew about this over three years ago and released this study:
Effective Tax Rates Are Correlated with Where Income Is Reported
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08950.pdf
Comparison of the Reported Tax Liabilities of Foreign- and U.S.-Controlled Corporations, 1998-2005
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08957.pdf
And a CNN Money article from around then:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/12/news/economy/corporate_taxes/
giggity
Corporate income it too nebulous a concept to remove *all* the loopholes.
For your average wage slave, income it pretty simple. It's your paycheck.
For a corporation, income = gross revenue - expenses.
We can monkey with both revenue and expenses. It's obvious that raw materials are an expense, but is the CEO's limo a necessary expense? If a customer places a big order with a contract that covers many years, when is the corporation required to report that as income? What happens when you report income, but the costumer goes bankrupt and the bankruptcy judge takes back a payment?
Hollywood has the most egregious examples of "creative" accounting, but all corporations do it. What you call a loophole, an accountant calls business as usual.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
while IRS audits Google, GE continues to pay ZERO corporate income tax, and DAMN PROUD OF IT.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Essentially meaningless if states are still allowed to keep offering bribes in the form of zero taxes for the first x years, fueling a race to the bottom in the form of devastated state budgets and slave-wages.
Tariffs are the answer, but I'm willing to say the tariff should be 80% for any employer with more than 75% of its work force overseas.
This whole argument that "corporations are evil" and "corporations should pay their fair share" is based on the bizarre human tendency to anthropomorphize corporations (and groups of people in general). Saying corporations should pay their fair share of taxes is really no different from saying my wallet should pay it's fair share of taxes based on the money it has in it.
Corporations shouldn't be taxed, period. Money that comes OUT of that corporation through stock dividends and wages and bonuses and perks should be taxed. And that should all be taxed as plain old income, not special kinds of income like "capital gains" that has lower rates to compensate for corporate taxes already taken out.
I'm also highly in favor of targeted VATs. For example, the FDA should be entirely funded on a VAT levied on food and drugs. And if people want their food to be safer, then they have to agree to raise the food VAT to pay for it. And if people want to lower taxes by reducing the food VAT, then they have to deal with less safe food. And the FDA would be legally required to have a balanced budget (i.e. they would only get to spend whatever money they got through food and drug VATs). Same goes for all other government spending. For example, the military should be paid for with an X% 'military' income tax, and ONLY the revenue from that tax. If people want to increase military spending, then the only way to do so is to increase the military income tax. I strongly believe that taxes and spending were tightly coupled like this, most people wouldn't have a problem with taxes, and that it could be a path to balanced budgets in this country. But today, nobody wants to pay taxes because it all goes into a huge slush fund with no apparent accountability on how those funds are spent. Why would any sane person want to spend more on taxes in the current system?
Big companies using their political influence for better tax rates is not only good for their bottom line, it stops new startups from possibly threatening them. You see this with tax breaks also, a small startup will not get the tax exceptions for opening unless they bring in a large chunk of new employees all at once. When you can have a corporate staff of hundreds (Didn't GE have about 1000 tax lawyers?) it does make you far more competitive. Just more hurdles for all entrepreneurs out there.
I'm glad Cain's 9-9-9 plan is at least getting some coverage. I don't believe it's the best solution but a universally applied simple tax code, without being riddled with loopholes, does seem like a great idea. Of course those are the exact reasons why we'll never see one implemented.
While you can indeed pick up a Incorporation Kit from Staples for $15, that isn't going to get you a corporation that will stand up to any kind of scrutiny. A corporation needs true independence from the people running it in order to qualify as a "real" corporation. This means real accounting, shares, shareholder meetings, etc. You can bet that if corporate profits were exempt from income tax, the IRS would start playing REAL close attention to small corps to see if they met the rules.
Could Microsoft have clout with the IRS?
Given that every desktop and likely plenty of the servers at the IRS run Windows and Office, I'd love to watch them say "audit our books, and we'll revoke every license to every Microsoft product purchased by every arm of the federal, state, and local governments". Now *that* would be be a funny show to watch.
I think you have that quite a bit backwards. For starters, the Obama administration has strong ties to Google, as well as even stronger ties to GE, which is a company that paid no taxes on similar amounts of money. On top of that, the head of GE is leading the charge to "correct" the tax code. Yeah, I feel reassured. GE claims to be paying a tax bill now, but I imagine this has a lot more to do with PR than reality because otherwise that would have been their initial claim, and not a backpedaled one. I doubt that we will ever know how much they truly paid, and whether it really was taxes paid for now, or simply pre-paying future taxes that they'll get some sort of refund on, while calling it payment for back taxes.
I do not care about Republicans because politicians pull the same tricks regardless of their party, and I am conservative--not a Republican. But, people talking about avoiding tax hikes "on the rich" are talking about it for people that are not committing ethical fraud by evading taxes, even if it is legally.
It's not our money to take, nor is it right to ask someone to give up something simply because they have been successful, or even ultra-successful. It is fair to expect people to pay their legally obligated share, and not abuse loopholes so ridiculously that there is no justification, like with some people and particularly many companies.
The reason so many companies do not pay even larger tax amounts is because they keep their money off shore, and a lot of them do this for reasonable reasons: they get taxed at somewhere around 35% if they try to bring the money back into the US. For legitimately made money--money simply made in another country--this means that it is taxed twice, and the second time is pretty heftily. A lot of companies are willing to bring their money back into the US, if that tax rate is lowered, which is win-win for everyone involved because the government gets a cut, and the company gets it back in the US to play with. There are also a lot fighting for no entry-tax, which I would not be opposed to as long as their were no loopholes to escape the initial tax (for companies like Google, Microsoft, and many others that never actually have most of their money taxed in the US, even when it should be).
Yeah I thought Google was supposed to be BFFs with the US government, what happened?
BTW the rich can easily avoid personal taxes by living for over 6 months in a low-tax jurisdiction. So that's a loophole you have to keep in mind.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Corporations shouldn't be taxed, period. Money that comes OUT of that corporation through stock dividends and wages and bonuses and perks should be taxed. And that should all be taxed as plain old income, not special kinds of income like "capital gains" that has lower rates to compensate for corporate taxes already taken out.
The biggest problem with this is that if you don't have a different rate for capital gains and dividends then inflation will mean that even if you sell an asset at a loss when adjusted for inflation you will end up paying taxes. This means there will be a disincentive to sell under-performing assets to someone who might make better use of the asset. I would say have the same rate as other income, but also allow deductions based on the same official inflation rate as is used to adjust social security payments. Right now capital gains taxes are way too low on goods held year and a day to about 10 years. The Crazy Eddie rates on capital gains mean businesses are highly encouraged to convert their income into capital gains via acquisitions that may not make a whole lot of sense in terms of overall profitability. This means that a tax being too low actually hurts growth because of its distorting effect.
If you got rid of the corporate income tax and replaced capital gains by regular income tax minus inflation adjustments, I think that would help businesses of all sizes a great deal. But the income tax rates might have to be adjusted upwards to make up for the income shortfall, and if you did the change too quickly the capital flows to adjust to the new tax regime might be problematic (though in terms of political will it is when the economy is bad is really the best time to make this type of large structural change.)
To those saying why does it matter what the tax rate is... Tiny but growing businesses do pay the top tax rates; you need to build up cash on hand disproportionate to the size of the business when you are growing rapidly. It's not good for prices or for jobs to quell competition against established players via tax policy.
Could Microsoft have clout with the IRS?
Given that every desktop and likely plenty of the servers at the IRS run Windows and Office, I'd love to watch them say "audit our books, and we'll revoke every license to every Microsoft product purchased by every arm of the federal, state, and local governments". Now *that* would be be a funny show to watch.
It would be funny to watch them try. They couldn't do it to you (legally) let alone the IRS.
So, when Boeing sells an aircraft made in Washington to some other random country, makes a profit, and pays taxes on it, this is some indirect way of hiding tax from US Citizens? How does that work exactly?
And Cain's proposal simply will not work in practice. An extremely high sales tax (in addition to LOWERING the standard of living by those too poor to save money by the amount of the tax) will be evaded. Constantly. Transactions simply move "underground."
And a national (high) sales tax would still have plenty of complications. Do you tax goods AND services? What's a "good", and what's a "service"? If I buy lumber to build a building, who pays the tax, or is the tax assessed multiple times? We have the guy that owned the stand of trees, the company that logged it, the company that milled it, the distributor that sold it, the builder that put something together with it, and the person that bought the building. Do we assess a massive sales tax at every link in the chain? That really hurts innovation by giving a gigantic advantage to vertically integrated conglomerates. If the person that bought the building is the only one that pays the tax, what happens when he turns around and sub-divides it? What do we do when he tears the building down and salvages it, is the lumber taxed again? Do we set up a Value Added Tax system? If so, that isn't very "simple" at all... it's a huge administrative burden and area of law in countries that use one.
These are not trivial questions, and they all have all kinds of ways of avoidance and loopholes, which you can be sure would be VERY common once there is a 30% tax to evade.
And I'm a little confused as to what Unions have to do with anything... what do Unions have to do with the tax system?
That's assuming government spending is tied to a budget based on how much money they actually have.
A corporation like Google can do this shell game with its taxable income, because it can split into multiple entities at will, locating any one anywhere in the world it's more advantageous, on any short notice. Without traveling across borders and customs. Without fearing arrest or even death - because those are human fears. They're not persons, they don't have rights. And they're robbing us to death.
--
make install -not war
What happened is that neither Google nor "the US government" is a single entity, that could be BFFs" with anything. Big corporations and the Federal government are a lot more complex than that.
--
make install -not war
But if I incorporate and create a tax haven in the Caymin Islands, the IRS would be on me with an anal probe faster than I can type "The IRS is on my with an anal probe." So even if I try to play by those rules, I can't play by those rules. And I'd be evading a lot less than a billion dollars worth of taxes.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I think we all can agree we need more US Jobs Both parties need to work together using a lot of policies to achieve this Tax policies does effect where a business will Locate Chris Owner Cel Financial Services CTEC Tax Preparer Registered Bonded California Please visit my website for all your Fillmore Income tax needs. http://www.taxprepfillmore.com/
Despite all of Google's privacy regressions (which by the way, are not nearly as bad as Facebook's) they have done a good job of shaking-up the establishment by making a lot of information free and easily available. This makes them the enemy of the establishment, that losely-knit group of corporate/government/media who are not necessarily working together, but all operate on the same corrupt principles.
I am guessing that Google doesn't do a good enough job of obeying these principles. Now, a tax-dodge which the IRS tends to overlook when other corporations do it, is being used as an excuse to go after Google.
This is a warning to Google. The establishment is saying: act like a real (corrupt) corporation or be destroyed by our gang of lawyers, politicians, and federal investigators.
Ah, Roman_mir again...
Your 0 0 0 plan is anarchy, pure and simple. Govt, of a large country, in a useful form, requires money in order to operate.
We tried to run a government on the 0 0 0 plan; it was called the Articles of Confederation. They didn't work, hence the Constitution.
You want to cut 99.99% of the government? At 2010 levels, that would leave you with a Federal Budget of approx. $345 Million. That ain't enough to provide Defense, Customs/Immigration, and Diplomacy; the most basic services of any Sovereign nation, much less Provide for the Common Defense, Promote the General Welfare, and Secure the Blessings of Liberty for Ourselves and Posterity. It's about a $1.10 per person.