happy_camper
Joined: 18 Mar 2005
Posts: 235
Location: 3rd coast
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 12:24 pm Post subject: Who Really Pays?
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Not that this is any surprise, but a local writer weighed in on who really feels the pinch when it comes time to pay taxes:
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| A study released by the Government Accountability Office last week found that almost two-thirds of American companies didn't pay corporate income tax annually from 1998 to 2005. The biggest corporations — those with assets of more than $250 million — were more likely to pay, but even among those companies, one-quarter reported no tax liability in at least four of the eight years, the study found. |
McCain, ever the lap dog of the business lobby, is on the stump for cutting corporate taxes, thus summoning the ghost of Reagan and trickle-down economics.
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The business lobby keeps arguing that low taxes spur corporate investment, create jobs and bolster the economy.
Except they haven't.
In exchange for the tax cuts of this decade, Corporate America has given its workers layoffs, cutbacks and stagnant salaries. Average worker wages have actually trailed inflation for almost two years.
At the same time, prices have risen, and if we aren't in a recession, we're certainly in a significant economic downturn.
As gasoline prices soared in June, U.S. consumers spent more on fuel than on vehicles and parts for the first time in 26 years, Bloomberg News reported.
Slumping commodity prices may have offered a reprieve, but the overall trend of the shifting tax burden from corporations to individuals persists. |
According to McCain, we should be shedding tears for over-taxed corporations, some of which claim, interestingly enough, they are making money hand over fist (Exxon, anyone?).
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Average corporate profits until this year had been on a tear, more than doubling in the past five years, according to data from the U.S. Commerce Department. So why are so many companies poor-mouthing when it comes to taxes? Because they essentially keep two sets of books — one for the Internal Revenue Service and one for the capital markets.
On the IRS set, they report tax-reducing expenses that don't show up on the numbers given to investors. For example, until recently, stock options granted to executives counted as a compensation expense for tax purposes, but they didn't reduce earnings reported to the market.
In other words, the high corporate tax rates that the business lobby likes to rail against are, in effect, a sham. U.S. companies actually pay less in taxes as a percentage of gross domestic product than most other countries. During the first six years of this decade, corporate tax collections were just 2.2 percent of GDP, far below the 3.4 percent average for industrialized countries, according to a recent Treasury Department study.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the percentage will slip below 2 percent in the next decade.
In short, U.S. companies are paying less of their profits in taxes than at any time since the 1930s. |
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Nofsdad
Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 6742
Location: Central CA
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 3:38 pm Post subject:
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Every time one of these misinformed or outright lying dodoes spouts that BS about the rich paying most of the taxes in this country and being entitled thereby to take whatever they want whenever they want... you just want to rub their faces in reports like this one.
Of course their answer is that it's all slanted reporting by the "liberally biased" media, even though the government agencies responsible for the raw data are cited or even linked for them and all they have to do is read the official reports for themselves.
As far as the individuals running these corporations are concerned... why do the troglodytes think there is a multi-billion dollar industry revolving around tax shelters, most of them offshore, in the country today? Hasn't it just been a few months since yet another major money hiding scandal broke and then was immediately hushed up in the media?
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