Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty, (rafflaw), Guest Blogger
With the constant news reports highlighting the economic woes of the State and Federal governments and the important battle in Wisconsin and other states over the claim that workers need to sacrifice a little more to help out their state governments, it is interesting to learn just how much big corporations pay in Federal Taxes. Would it surprise you if I told you that many of our largest corporations pay zero Federal taxes?
I don’t know about you, but it did surprise me to learn that Bank of America, General Electric, Boeing, Citigroup and Exxon-Mobil pay no Federal taxes. “Indeed, as politicians are asking ordinary Americans to sacrifice their education, their health, their labor rights, and their wellbeing to tackle budget deficits, some of the world’s richest multinational corporations are getting away with shirking their responsibility and paying nothing.” Think Progress We are not talking about corporations who have had big losses to deal with, but huge profitable companies who are making Billions off of the American public and paying zero taxes to Uncle Sam.
One company on Think Progress’ list is Boeing. Some years ago Boeing moved its headquarters to Chicago and received millions in tax breaks from the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago as an inducement to move to Chicago. I bring up Boeing because it is based out of nearby Chicago and because it is a big military contractor. That means it gets billions in business from the U.S. Military. In fact, Boeing just received a $35 Billion dollar contract to build tankers for the United States Air Force over the next several years. “Despite receiving billions of dollars from the federal government every single year in taxpayer subsidies from the U.S. government, Boeing didn’t “pay a dime of U.S. federal corporate income taxes” between 2008 and 2010.” Boeing
Boeing is not alone on the list of these big corporations that does business with the United States Military, but pays little or no Federal tax on its profits. General Electric is another prime example of a company making billions off of the United States, while paying zip in federal taxes. “In 2009, General Electric — the world’s largest corporation — filed more than 7,000 tax returns and still paid nothing to U.S. government. They managed to do this by a tax code that essentially subsidizes companies for losing profits and allows them to set up tax havens overseas.” Think Progress
Why is it that the American public buys products from and supports these huge corporations and yet these corporations don’t have to pay taxes on their profits? The answer is really pretty simple. Who do you think writes or influences Congress to write the tax laws that allow these companies to steal from the American public? Corporate Lobbyists pull the strings and Congress jumps. Tax Analysts The ability of these big corporations to get away with paying little or no Federal taxes puts a huge burden on the average American taxpayer and corporations that do not take advantage of the loopholes. “According to a report from the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, a $100 billion annual tax burden is shifted to US-based individuals and companies thanks to corporations stowing their profits offshore: Over ten years, an estimated $1 trillion in revenues is lost due to the use of tax havens and the government must make up for this shortfall. This diversion ends up being shouldered by other companies and taxpayers and is transferred as higher debt for future generations.” Wonkroom
The next time your read or hear about the sacrifices that the middle class must make in order to shore up the government’s finances due to an economic disaster that was mainly caused by Wall Street, ask how much extra General Electric or Boeing or Bank of America are going to put into the tax pot to help balance the budget. Maybe Citigroup or Exxon-Mobil or Wells Fargo will be sacrificing in order to restore financial sanity to the Federal budget. If you believe that, then I guess pigs really do fly. Wouldn’t that $1 Trillion dollars of lost tax revenue come in handy right about now?
Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty, (rafflaw), Guest Blogger
Gyges,
Good explanation!
Buddha,
I agree with your simple solution. Make corporations actually pay taxes. The $100 Billion per year of uncollected taxes saves more than what the Republicans in the House are “saving” with their draconian cuts. That is why I told my Congressman, Joe Walsh who had responded to an earlier email about cutting planned parenthood’s funds while at the same time voting to defund Obamacare. The truth can be so simple and yet so scary to politicians.
Buddha Is Laughing 1, February 28, 2011 at 10:49 am
The answer to the problem is simple.
Tighter regulation of corporations.
################################
Were I to have any say, to which lawyers surly will cry out, “Nay!” I would regulate for-profit corporations into becoming cooperatives?
I regularly get items from the Door County Cooperative?
A cooperative, in Wisconsin, can do everything a corporation can do except plunder the commons?
Excuse me:
“They raise prices until the gain from the increase in profit per unit sold starts being offset by the decrease in customers (remember, less people buy when the price goes up).”
I’d blame keyboard beagle, but anyone with a beagle will know why that’s not really all that much of an issue.
“I judge people by their feet, not their mouth,” he told the Financial Times. “We know what his instincts are – they are Robin Hood-esque. He is anti-business.”
Well, I at times judge people by their mouth, not their feet. In this case, I’ve judged Mr. Buckley and find that he is an anti-American tool.
I’m with Mike S – Screw 3M
Maor,
I’m a big fan of how in the middle of claiming people don’t understand economics, you completely overlook supply and demand.
So, here’s a lesson for you: Imagine two lines charted on an graph. The X axis is labeled as Price, the Y as Quantity. on one line as X increases so does Quantity. That’s supply, the more money a company makes on and individual sale, the more of the product they’ll make. There’s another on that as X increases, Y decreases. That’s demand, the more expensive the product, the fewer people are willing to buy it.
With me so far?
O.k., so the way a company finds that “Sweet spot” where they make the most money per product sold (this is an incredible simplification that assumes a) a competitive market, and b) production costs that stay the same per unit produced) is like this: They raise prices until the gain from the increase in profit per unit sold stops being offset by the decrease in customers (remember, less people buy when the price goes up).
Now I want you to think about that, that means that even if the production cost suddenly shifts, (say things start costing more) there’s an upper limit to how much they can raise prices. So, no they can’t just shift all the cost of new taxes to the consumer, THEY have to eat part of it to. Depending on how quickly the demand drops off as price rises, they may even eat most of it.
Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. The other half is big guns.
The answer to the problem is simple.
Tighter regulation of corporations.
Making sure corporations pay their fair share of taxes.
Criminal prosecution of corporate officers with appropriate prison time and asset forfeiture to reflect the seriousness of corporate crimes.
The only fiction here Brian is that you post to do anything other than attack the validity of the legal system.
A “legal fiction” is simply a construct which allows courts to apply a law in a way that was not originally intended. The concept of corporations was to allow for the creation of business entities with narrowly defined limited liability and a mechanism for raising capital so as to foster research and development of products while protecting investors who may or may not have direct control over operations. As part of this construct, corporations are granted a what was once limited personality – the legal fiction that they, like people, may purchase property, enter into contracts and to avail themselves of the courts if wronged civilly or criminally. The limitation of liability is called the corporate veil. It can be pierced if deliberate crimes upon the part of corporate officers or shareholders to create personal liability for said officers and/or shareholders.
The problem is that corporations have used their lobbyists to corrupt the law by buying the loyalty of politicians who have distorted the law to make what was once a useful tool – corporate form – into a socially destructive mechanism by slowly increasing the limits of the corporate shield against liability and most recently expanding the once very narrow fiction of corporate personality by giving corporations the right to unlimited participation in campaign finance via the manifestly unconstitutional Citizens United decision.
The problem isn’t the utility of the corporate form as narrowly and originally envisioned and constructed.
The problem is greedy politicians distorting the corporate form into something it was never intended to be – a blind behind which sociopathic criminals can hide from justice while they commit their crimes in the name of profits.
Puzzled? No. You’re not puzzled, Brian. You’re full of crap about cause and effect. It’s not illegal about you to know about the law either. This is evidenced by the fact that you seem to know enough about it to repeatedly attack its role in society.
“Why do I prefer the Law of Reception to the Law of Deception?”
And why do you dismiss the necessary role of courts in society?
Because you are for tyranny and the willing acceptance of tyranny without legal challenge would be why.
The only “Law of Reception” you are interested in is that your Big Lies – an application of the Law of Deception – be accepted without challenge.
And thus another one of your faulty big lies is dismantled.
“and other states over the claim that workers need to sacrifice a little more to help out their state governments”,
Here may be an un for seen consequence:
N.J. public workers are in a hurry to retire
Published: Monday, February 28, 2011, 7:13 AM Updated: Monday, February 28, 2011, 10:22 AM
By Jarrett Renshaw/Statehouse Bureau
“TRENTON — More than 20,000 police officers, firefighters, teachers and other public employees put in their retirement papers last year as momentum was building for sweeping health and pension reform in Trenton, state figures show.
That is a 60 percent jump from 2009 retirements and the highest in at least a decade, according to the Division of Pension and Benefits.”
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/02/more_than_20k_nj_public_employ.html
Have I come to realize that there are two disparate fields of Law?
The Law of Deception?
And,
The Law of Reception?
Why do I prefer the Law of Reception to the Law of Deception?
I am puzzled?
In Black’s Ninth, page 391, I find:
“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law…(I)t possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it.” Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 518, 636 (1819) (Marshall, J.)
No wonder it is illegal and unlawful for people like me to attempt to know or understand anything regarding law, such that I am always under duress of threat of again being driven through bankruptcy by the Adversarial System of Law and Jurisprudence so that the Greed of the Creed of Adversarial Law may drain the last of my life to terminal extinction?
If the charter of the creation of a corporation includes not the property of paying taxes, then the corporation cannot, by definition, by law, and by the fact that the corporation does not actually exist save as a Deception of Law, means, to me, that no corporation the charter of creation of which includes not the duty to pay taxes can ever be liable for taxes?
The Law of Deception especially most deceives those who work to create it?
Is a more accurate explanation possible?
Ebob, anytime I can help..
Mrs M:
Thanks for giving the visual to that :
“The Monsters Are Due Out On Maple Street”
LK:
Thanks,for getting that link to post.For some reason like I said it just wouldn’t paste for me.
Ebob, Your link seemed to post for me- thanks, good article.
http://www.truth-out.org/the-monsters-are-due-maple-street67972
Regarding BIL’s article above on the possibility of the Koch bros. being investigate by the IRS for failure to lawfully disclose, it appears from what I have read tax fraud is a very profitable tool in the world of high finance. Big companies eventually settle with the government (after having use of their ill gotten gains for years) for pennies on the dollar. The actual payment is small compared to the taxes owed. Corporate crooks need to start going to jail.
“Mr Buckley, who has run the diversified manufacturer since 2005, said: “There is a sense among companies that this is a difficult place to do business. It is about regulation, taxation, seemingly anti-business policies in Washington, attitudes towards science.”
He added: “Politicians forget that business has choice. We’re not indentured servants and we will do business where it’s good and friendly. If it’s hostile, incrementally, things will slip away. We’ve got a real choice between manufacturing in Canada and Mexico – which tend to be pro-business – or America.”
Bdaman,
I didn’t realize that you support un-American Traitors like Mr. Buckley. I would like to see the balance sheet between what #M pays in taxes as opposed to what benefits they get from the U.S..
I loved his comment about Corporations not being indentured servants, considering that most Corporations would like to bestow that status on their employees. In addition the threat to use overseas labor isn’t about Canada. It is about Mexico, China, etc. where the workers virtually are indentured servants.
I’m certainly not going to buy 3M products in the future if I can help it. Thank you for the link. I’m always interested in who the Corporate traitors are and this informed me about another one.
eniobob,
I found this on youtube:
Twilight Zone’s The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street, Part 3
Billionaire financier George Soros stands to make handsome profits with his newly launched investment fund, established to capitalize on new “green energy” — a policy agenda largely dependent on government subsidies supported by the Obama White House.
In a statement announcing the new venture — dubbed Silver Lake Kraftwerk (SLKW) — Soros describes the fund’s role to “leverage technology and business model innovation to improve energy efficiency, reduce waste and emissions, harness renewable energy, and more efficiently use natural resources, among other applications… Developing alternative sources of energy and achieving greater energy efficiency is both a significant global investment opportunity and an environmental imperative.”
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/02/new-soros-hedge-fun-profiting-obamas-green-energy-push-hires-top-
30 years ?
Listen to this. Scary stuff. From the little I know this guy is right.
Hello. My name is Porter Stansberry.
A little over ten years ago I founded Stansberry & Associates Investment Research. It has become one of the largest and most recognized investment research companies in the world, serving hundreds of thousands of subscribers in more than 120 countries.
You may know of our firm because of the work we did over the last several years – helping investors avoid the big disasters associated with Wall Street’s collapse.
We warned investors to avoid Fannie and Freddie, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and General Motors and dozens of other companies that have since collapsed. We even helped our subscribers find opportunities to profit from these moves by shorting stocks and buying put options. To my knowledge, no other research firm in the world can match our record of correctly predicting the catastrophe that occurred in 2008.
But that’s not why I created this letter.
http://www.stansberryresearch.com/pro/1011PSIENDVD/PPSIM251/PR