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
“Stamford,
To be fair, he did say it was legal.”
Your are correct. But since the Constitution is so “revered” by the Right I was simply pointing out that it is explicitly stated in the document itself. 🙂
raff, Thank you. The good old days were not all that great if you look at things objectively. There is a question on an IQ test that asks why people should pay taxes. It is staggering that this is one of the most missed questions on the test. The most common answer is, “I don’t think they should.”
Well said OS. there are no free lunches unless you are wealthy or a large corporation.
Gyges,
As I think about it, it was legalized theft for Obama to cave on the tax give aways for the wealthy and the etate tax!
Moar/Roam is more out of touch with reality than I thought. Perhaps the troll would like to live in a world with no governmental infrastructure. Personally, I kind of like the idea of a fireman coming if my house is on fire, or a police officer if we have a prowler. I really do prefer to drive on paved roads rather than dirt trails, even though I do own a Jeep. And I like the idea of not having to boil my water before drinking it. And when I was a kid, we had an outhouse. When the temperature is in single digits, it is much preferable to go indoors rather than making my way out to the back lot and sitting on an ice cold board with a hole in it. I really do like the idea of indoor plumbing and a government run sewage system, and also not have to worry about my drinking water being contaminated with the sewage.
Stamford,
To be fair, he did say it was legal.
Stamford,
The right doesn’t usually worry about the Constitution getting in their way. They just make it up as they go.
Moar,
“Taxation is nothing but legalized theft.”
That damned Constitution!
My handy intro econ book, David C. Colander, “Economics: Second Edition,” Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1994, 1995, does include a brief section, on pages 786 and 787, on “Correlation Does Not Imply Causation” and does address the inherent “iffyness” of corroboration?
A footnote on page 787 mentions the issue of Bayesian statisticians and “Classical statisticians,” which strikes me as a little funny as I observe Bayesian methods to be more classical than frequentist (aka “Classical”” methods?
Meanwhile, this “frequentist-Classical” and Bayesian issue is central to the work I do regarding the Structure of Law and its relationship with The Public Safety, from a Biophysics-Bioengineering view; and my work is heavily Bayes-Theorem grounded, whereas I observe that Bayes Theorem tends to get scant recognition, except by a very few judges and attorneys, the most notable of whom I have yet found being Judge Richard A. Posner, as he has written in “How Judges Think,” Harvard University Press, 2008?
Because my work is vastly more Bayesian-statistical and because of the difficulty most people seem to me to have generating viable Bayesian priors, it is common for people to use frequentist statistical approaches, because of their computational simplicity, for problems which tend to yield valid results only when the statistical approaches are almost entirely, or entirely, Bayesian?
From Wikipedia, copied and pasted:
“Bayes’ theorem expresses the conditional probability, or “posterior probability”, of a hypothesis H (i.e. its probability after evidence E is observed) in terms of the “prior probability” of H, the prior probability of E, and the conditional probability of E given H. It implies that evidence has a confirming effect if it is more likely given H than given not-H.[1] Bayes’ theorem is valid in all common interpretations of probability, and it is commonly applied in science and engineering.[2] However, there is disagreement among statisticians regarding its proper implementation.”
The matter of “its proper implementation” is grounded in the decision boundary issues that are at the core of my biological pattern recognition graduate school studies with my thesis adviser, Earl E. Gose, which I here describe as well as I am describing it?
“Adamant Ignorance” has always take the form of what I mentally model as though of the phenomenon of latent psychosis, in the sense told of by C. G. Jung?
For as long as someone is as though intent on crushing what I write with what appear to me to be the ways of latent psychosis, I will attempt to write no words of mine which do not culminate in a question mark, the better to deny any claim of stipulation on my part in the absence of actual stipulation on my part?
Gyges,
I don’t know about moar, but I agree with you!
Moar,
You’ll have to forgive me for assuming you agreeing with someone you say is right.
Taxes aren’t theft. No matter how many times you say it, or even imply it. You receive concrete benefits from living in the U.S. Thus you pay the organization that provides you with those benefits. Now you may not agree that the benefit is equal to the cost, but saying “I’m being overcharged for this tow” is different than saying “that tow truck driver just took money that didn’t belong to him.”
So, unless you’d care to argue that the government has never done anything good for the people living in the U.S., I’m going to go ahead and say that your statement that “And tax dollars do not belong to the government, they belong to the people who earn the money,” is just flat out wrong.
moar,
if tax dollars belong to the people, why don’t you have a problem with corporations stealing the people’s money?
Gyges,
I didn’t even take an Econ class because I knew it would put me to sleep too!
drf,
jobs are going away while we give them tax breaks. The only way that you stop them from sending jobs overseas is to not make it profitable to do that. Right now they can make save millions and in some cases billions by setting up tax havens overseas. Take that away and make them pay their fair share like the rest of the “citizens”. Secondly, make it more expensive to send jobs overseas by the use of tariffs and taxes. Profit is not a bad thing, but profit while destroying our economy is something completely different. You are right that they have gamed the system and I allude to that in the original posting. Without a change in how elections are funded, it will be an uphill battle.
Gyges:
you are simply wrong, Roam posted about taxes. I just agreed with him.
But anyway, you are wrong anyway. If all companies that produce widget X get taxed equally the price goes up. I would think there is enough price variation to support the cost of the tax. But the other side is what does the company make on widget X above the cost of production of widget X? If it isnt enough, widget X isnt going to get produced and the consumer loses a choice.
Taxation sucks anyway you look at it.
But keep on believing the shit shoveled by today’s leftist economic intellectuals. Why do you think we are in the shape we are in? Ideas have consequences, what you see happening is expected. Statism doesn’t work.
And tax dollars do not belong to the government, they belong to the people who earn the money. Taxation is nothing but legalized theft.
Ok, so jobs are being sent out of the US while the companies get huge tax breaks and subsidies. The one side says if we stop allowing the dodging of taxes by these companies, then they will continue to send jobs overseas.
So in either case, jobs are going away. How exactly do taxes have anything to do with it? Sounds to me like companies have gamed the system, and there is nothing the IS can do to stop the country from falling into a 3rd world hell hole.
Greed ladies and gentlemen, greed is a powerful thing.
Mike nice to see you are feeling well. Are you enjoying this beautiful Florida Weather?
Did you know that a small nuclear war could stall Global Warming.
NASA computer models reveal what a small, regional nuclear war in one part of the world would do to the global climate and environment. The results are grim.
http://www.livescience.com/12996-regional-nuclear-war-effects-global-cooling.html
Doesn’t it seem like it’s just a matter of time when you look at the picture?
Government Employees Owe Billions in Delinquent Taxes
http://www.cnbc.com/id/40215318
And Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night Live
Andrew Cuomo Budget Cuts Could Cost New York City $1 Billion
Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez Takes Advantage of New York Tax Loophole
That loophole will let Rodriguez and the rest of his well-to-do neighbors enjoy paying almost no property tax for the next several years since the program grants a 98 percent real estate tax abatement for as much as 25 years to condominium owners in newly built housing. New York City’s Independent Budget Office has reported the 421A program will cost New York City more than $900 million this year in lost tax revenues.
Coincidentally, the Huffington Post has reported Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s budget includes a loss of approximately $1 billion in funding, which will lead to layoffs of firefighters, police officers and other essential personnel.
But wealthy condo owners like Rodriguez will not have to pay taxes on their expensive homes. The program is scheduled to end at the end of 2011, but real estate developers have already begun lobbying for it to be extended, if not expanded.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110227/sp_ac/7945594_yankees_alex_rodriguez_takes_advantage_of_new_york_tax_loophole
As I recall Bill Moyers once said, and I doubt it really originated with him, The rich are rich because the poor are poor.”?
Marxist-Leninist Communism appears to me to have been a disastrous failure, regardless of the high praise methinks it got in Sidney and Beatrice Webb, “Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? Volume I,” Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936?
It is my observation that the whole of human history is comprised mainly, and often exclusively with recognizing the symptoms of a social problem or predicament or enigma and identifying the most blatantly apparent proximate cause and then directing all available effort at palliating the symptoms as though, throughout also much of the tradition of medicine, the symptoms are the disease, such that, if one becomes no longer aware of the symptoms, the disease is necessarily cured. This method, in medicine, “The Medical Model” is being revealed, slowly, as being of a for of decision boundary pattern classification error?
Within the construct of human language in word form, the decision boundary error is of incorrectly recognizing the actual boundaries between object, denotation, and connotation. Only after communication theory had become sufficiently developed did methods of recognizing and correcting such decision boundary errors become sufficiently recognizable as to begin to allow useful decision boundary error correction effectiveness to become even slightly practicable?
BiL, I wonder, is your world view severely contaminated with logical positivism?
Rafflaw,
It amazes me how many people that decry a lack of understanding of economics apparently slept through Econ 101.