tax havens

Corporations Hoard Cash While Americans Go Without A Job

Submitted by on

The amount of cash multinational corporations are stashing is at an all time high and economists are wondering why.  A recent Federal Reserve research paper examined some of the reasons.  A big one is multinationals pay no taxes on profits if they park them offshore.  A stash of cash is building and the miser pile is now a mountain.

Saturday Reads Around The Internets - Hurricaine Hype

Submitted by on

shocknews
Welcome to the weekly roundup of great articles, facts and figures. These are the weekly finds that made our eyes pop.

 

Hurricane Hype for Advertising Bucks

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, MSNBC had some knuckle head reporter position himself on the Outer Banks so it gave the illusion waves were lapping at his back. Stay Safe was said during every interview in a voice of dire concern, the reporter would be swept out to sea, live on air. With that, we bring you Get Real: Hurricane Irene Should Be Renamed Hurricane Hype:

Obama Brings You More Bad Trade Deals

Submitted by on

Obama 2008 Campaign Flier
Whenever there is noise in the media machine, you can be sure some agenda the American people absolutely reject will be enacted. Such is the case with the Obama administration moving forward on three more NAFTA style trade agreements with Columbia, Panama and South Korea. These are trade pacts multinational corporate lobbyists demand.

The South Korean trade pact increases the trade deficit and puts U.S. workers in more unfair labor competition. Even with a new biased USTR study, littered with fantasy tariff schedules and nebulous additional regulation requirements, cannot hide the fact this trade deal increases the deficit. The new report was requested by Republicans since they didn't like the dismal results of the previous study. Regardless of the spaghetti wording, the bottom line is imports, just in autos & parts, will increase $907 million while exports will increase $48–66 million. In other words, the Obama administration and Congress know this trade deal will increase the deficit and cause further job losses. They want it anyway.

(The image is a 2008 Obama campaign flier. All three of these trade agreements are structured like NAFTA.)

A Little Extortion Never Hurts the Bottom Line

Submitted by on

Original published on The Agonist

It used to be if a corporation wanted to practice the dark art of extortion, it would do so well outside of the public eye. Not these days; company CEOs are out in the open and proud of it when they want to extract yet more money out of the taxpayers.

Take the case of Caterpillar CEO Douglas Oberhelman. He wrote a letter to Illinois state governor Pat Quinn, complaining about the state’s recent increase in the corporate tax rate from 4.8% to 7.0%. He said at least four other states have approached the company offering generous allowances if Caterpillar would move its headquarters out of Peoria, Illinois. Neighboring states of Indiana and Iowa have admitted to lobbying Caterpillar, as has the far-away state of Texas. The company said it wasn’t threatening Gov. Quinn over the tax increase, but it had “to do what’s right for Caterpillar.” That’s corporate-speak for “we’re threatening to leave the state if you don’t rescind this tax increase.”

Google Double Dutch

Submitted by on

Sounds like a sex act, doesn't it? In a way, it is. Business Week has a HOWTO on not paying U.S. corporate taxes, courtesy of Google. shell game

Next time you hear about how we need to lower taxes to make America more competitive, think of this story. International tax law must be a lucrative career. Grand Puppeteer of global money flows, all to play nation states and their corresponding corporate tax codes against each other. The game is to not pay taxes anywhere.

To reduce its overseas tax bill, Google uses a complicated legal structure that has saved it $3.1 billion since 2007 and boosted last year's overall earnings by 26 percent. While many multinationals use similar structures, Google has managed to lower its overseas tax rate more than its peers in the technology sector. Its rate since 2007 has been 2.4 percent.

All perfectly legal, Business Week explains how Google profits end up in Bermuda, and shows how multinational corporations pit national tax codes against each other.

Full Spectrum Inequality

The Plunder, Pillage and Destruction of the American Tax Base

We don’t pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes. – Leona Helmsley

PREAMBLE:
This brief blog is an attempt at a synthesis of the excellent and exemplary research of superior individuals who have sought out the ways and manner of tax evasion and tax avoidance.

When such avoidance and evasion becomes institutionalized, the impact on any society can be quite severe. Seldom do people understand the connection between massive and institutionalized tax loss and deficit (debt) spending and the existence of debt-financed billionaires (that is, debt-financed wealth).

These activities are extremely antithetical to all forms of progress, as I endeavor to illustrate here.

In the virtual economy, tax shelter design and securitized financial instrument creation rules the day. From the information presented below, one would not be remiss to believe that those with American citizenship who work to evade taxation are truly only citizens of transnationals and multinationals, not citizens of any country.


1913

The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community is not small. It is nil. – John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash

The year 1913 was fraught with momentous change. That was the year America saw the establishment of the oil depletion allowance, the Federal Reserve System, the federal income tax and the Rockefeller Foundation.

The federal income tax as we know it today was, not unexpectedly, introduced in Congress by a Republican, to be adopted as the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Pages