Badger Corporate Tax Dodgers!

[Robert]

Next April 15th (Tax Day) would be a good time to connect the dots between state and local revenue shortages and the scandal of corporate tax dodging.

States across the country face combined budget deficits of over $102 billion while overseas tax havens cost the US Treasury over a $100 billion per year.

The UK appears to be leading the way:

"In England, the movement UK UNCUT, has galvanized street protests, media investigations and legislative action. They have dramatized the scandal of billions lost thanks to overseas tax havens and corporate loopholes with the human face of federal and state budget cuts.

"In every U.S. state, we should be doing the same.

"Every time a politician complains that 'there is no money' or 'we must make these cuts,' we should be pointing to the corporate tax dodging that could immediately close our budget gaps.

"We should name names and show up at their branches.

"First there are the banks that wrecked our economy and accepted billions in taxpayer funded TARP funds. These include Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. Our message: Pay up!

"Pay up! General Electric, Carnival Cruise lines, Boeing, FedEx, News Corp, ExxonMobil, Pfizer, Proctor and Gamble.

"They pretend their profits are earned in tax havens like the Grand Cayman Islands and their losses are earned in the U.S., lowering their tax bills."

Wisconsin 2.0:

Just a thought but I would be willing to bet those Organizations taxes are scrutinized by legal entity's far more then yours are, I would well imagine and in terms of obeying the laws that your leaders created they comply to a far higher standard then you do on yours.

Just saying

 

[American Horse]

I CAN SEE the argument for the complete elimination of corporate taxes.

But assuming we do that we need to make up the shortfalls someplace else.

Who gets their taxes raised to make up for that tax reduction?

Well...who has the money to make up the difference?

Show me the money, folks.

There’s 14-trillion presently sitting offshore; a large part of that would come back and grow jobs. Right now it sits offshore doing nothing for us, and it’s likely to be put to work there rather than sitting idle.

Upon elimination of corporate income taxes, the same income would pass through to individuals who would pay taxes on their earned income. Including that, but also apart from that, money not paid as corporate income taxes would be passed through as either dividends (with those earners paying taxes) or would be spent on new facilities creating both jobs indirectly in the brick/mortar and equipment required to do that, and directly in the construction jobs, and after construction, in the jobs created in operating new industrial facilities. Satellite businesses would grow up around and support them with the creation of more new jobs. Income taxes would be paid into the treasury by all those working people.

The non-productive expenditures by corporations to protect themselves from the tax code would be more usefully invested by them in competitive ventures here at home. Instead they find better results overseas. Our wages may be higher here than many of the countries which attract corporations to open operations there, but that is why we need to remove costs of production that only make wages here a part of a bigger problem.

Many regulations that discourage the creation of new businesses would need to be rescinded. We should do away with any regulation that has questionable-cost-benefit ratio; that add disproportionately to costs to new ventures or discourages new start-ups.

Take as an example the results of Sarbanes-Oxley and the costs it added to the creation of new initial public offerings (IPOs) - a million plus dollars. After it went into effect there was an immediate drop in the creation of IPOs in this country. For the first time ever, in 2009 China led the US in the launching of new IPOs. And they did it by a factor of more 2-to-1 as rated by dollars and about 3.5-to-1 by sheer numbers. They had 45% of all new IPOs globally.

Our economy grows less vibrantly due to corporate income taxes and excessive unproductive regulation. The potential improvement in economic growth would easily replace the loss to the treasure of corporate income taxes raised by the more easily accounted for individual taxes. Everyone who earns income of whatever type, earned, unearned, interest, dividend, or capital gains already is required to report that income.

The corporate income tax stimulates the creation of corporate tax loopholes by politicians. Those loopholes stifle those businesses which don’t enjoy the benefits flowing out of the loopholes.

Under the load of those regulations and accounting requirements small corporations suffer much more than the larger. Corporations the size of GE or GM etal, have entire platoons of accountants and attorneys to deal with regulations and their taxes. Those big guys see them as beneficial to them. They create an unlevel playing field against upstarts, a playing field they are well adapted to and have ample resources to exploit to their benefit as they practice what big business has become all about; gaming the system.

The resulting vibrant economy versus our present stultified economy would produce individual taxes through expansion more than enough to replace the present corporate taxes that are payed into the treasury.

 

[georgephillip]

Next April 15th (Tax Day) would be a good time to connect the dots between state and local revenue shortages and the scandal of corporate tax dodging.

States across the country face combined budget deficits of over $102 billion while overseas tax havens cost the US Treasury over a $100 billion per year.

The UK appears to be leading the way:

"In England, the movement UK UNCUT, has galvanized street protests, media investigations and legislative action. They have dramatized the scandal of billions lost thanks to overseas tax havens and corporate loopholes with the human face of federal and state budget cuts.

"In every U.S. state, we should be doing the same.

"Every time a politician complains that 'there is no money' or 'we must make these cuts,' we should be pointing to the corporate tax dodging that could immediately close our budget gaps.

"We should name names and show up at their branches.

"First there are the banks that wrecked our economy and accepted billions in taxpayer funded TARP funds. These include Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. Our message: Pay up!

"Pay up! General Electric, Carnival Cruise lines, Boeing, FedEx, News Corp, ExxonMobil, Pfizer, Proctor and Gamble.

"They pretend their profits are earned in tax havens like the Grand Cayman Islands and their losses are earned in the U.S., lowering their tax bills."

Wisconsin 2.0:

Just a thought but I would be willing to bet those Organizations taxes are scrutinized by legal entity's far more then yours are, I would well imagine and in terms of obeying the laws that your leaders created they comply to a far higher standard then you do on yours.

Just saying

US tax laws are created by "leaders" dependent upon the campaign contributions of the richest 1% of Americans. Many of the tax dodges, rolls and avoidance that takes place here is completely legal, since the rich have always answered to a "far higher standard."

Additionally, enforcement of so-called "white-collar" crimes like tax evasion and mortgage fraud has been declining for decades in the US primarily because of funding choices Republicans AND Democrats in the US Congress make in service to those who fund their election campaigns.

A good recent example of this occurred when Bush, Jr transferred dozens of FBI investigators from white collar crime to homeland security after the events of 9/11/2001 even though the FBI was pointing out rampant securities and control fraud that was occurring in the mortgage industry at the same time.

Bush compounded that crime by not hiring additional investigators to replace those looking into Wall Street crimes, leading to the Great Recession of 2008.

 

[washamericom]

"First there are the banks that wrecked our economy and accepted billions in taxpayer funded TARP funds. These include Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. Our message: Pay up!

Wells Fargo was completely solvent and forced to take TARP, BoA was forced to buy Merill Lynch (which ended up sucking their asset pool dry), while Goldman Sachs is a revolving door for Treasury Secretaries, Fed Chairmen and other of the highest financial posts in gubmint.

But don't let niggling little things like facts get in the way of one of your hallucinatory rants.

didn't they just "aquire" wachovia?

 

[Wiseacre]

Let me ask a question: if you force US businesses to pay more taxes one way or another, who do you think ultimately pays it? If you increase a business's tax burden, they're going to take one or more of the following steps:

1. pass the cost onto the customers, in part or in total.

2. cut costs somewhere else, including fewer employees or fewer hours worked.

3. outsource, automate, rework the business model if possible.

4. go out of business or move to another country. Some small businesses may not need much of a nudge these days.


The reality is that raising corp taxes may not be the good thing you think it is. Do you really think businesses are just going to accept less profit without making any changes such as those listed above? If so, I would suggest you get in touch with reality.

If it's on profits, they'll likely just pass less profit to shareholders. You can't pass on costs to customers in a free market for long (if there is an existing healthy profit margin) because of competition. Also, if one company is paying taxes (like Google) and another isn't (GE), it make GE's ability to compete lopsided and in their favor compared to taxpaying competitors.

Something like GE may move to another country, but they can alway face the threat of imports duties.

You know what happens to a public company when they post lower profits? Their share price takes a big hit, and when that happens the guys at the top lose big money in their stock options and face the shareholder's wrath. Shareholders and investors move onto other more profitable companies, so the option of settling for less profit is an undesireable option.

So, they'll look for anyway possible to avoid that, like outsource, or automate some business functions or streamline as best they can. Often times that means layoffs and reduced hours, anything they can do to mitigate the tax increase. Of course, a lot of 'em look for and find ways to avoid higher taxes through any loopholes or credits they can use.

A lot of people, including many in Congress and in the WH, will use a linear model to detrermine that a tax increase will result in an X increase in revenue. It usually doesn't work out to be as much as they thought and you have the consequences of more unemployment.

And that's just the existing companies, what do think the impact is on potential new businesses? Foreign investors and entrepeneurs are going to start up businesses somewhere else rather than pay the higher taxes here, not to mention the ridiculous amount of regulations they have to navigate.