Musing about the American Experiment…

In order for the American dream to work, everyone must do their part. As you can see from this report, the majority of the corporations doing business here don’t.

WASHINGTON — Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress.

The study by the Government Accountability Office said about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period.

Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to the GAO.

Many companies paid no taxes in 7-year period | Business | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle.

Now most corporations in America are start-ups or small, mom and pop operations that have adopted a corporate form to lower their tax rates. And a greater percentage of large corporations do pay some taxes. But in 2005, with corporate profits reaching new heights as a percentage of national income, the GAO found that over one-fourth — 28% of large corporations paid no taxes. (It defined large corporations as those with assets of at least $250 million dollars or gross receipts of at least $50 million dollars.) They can tell you how to make $50 million dollars and not pay taxes.

Not surprisingly, the income collected from corporations has been declining as a percentage of GDP, with the burden transferred to your income and payroll taxes. According to a study by the Treasury Department, from 2000-2006, an average of 2.2% of GDP was collected in corporate taxes. This compares to an average of 3.4% in other industrial countries. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that, under current law, corporate revenues will decline to 1.9% of GDP by 2017.

Robert L. Borosage: The Great Corporate Tax Heist.

It’s the very infrastructure the taxes support that these profitable companies do not contribute to. Yet they are able to spend millions each year buying influence at every level of government. It seems to me that that is where campaign finance needs to start. Banning non-personal contributions would be a good place to begin.

What do you think?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

3 thoughts on “Musing about the American Experiment…

  1. Didn’t Obama flip flop, that is lie, regarding public funds? Yes he did.

    And the corporate tax “news” was misleading. “The vast majority of the large corporations that did not pay taxes had net losses, he said, and thus no income on which to pay taxes. “The notion that there is a large pool of untaxed corporate profits is incorrect.”

    http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/study-tallies-corporations-not-paying-income-tax/

    Any burden on corporations can affect employment, so we should be EXTREMELY careful to not bite the hand that literally feeds us. BTW- it was two DEMOCRATS who ordered the study, so it’s no surprise how the media ran with these out of context conclusions.

  2. It’s good to hear from the other side again, Jim.

    Do you really want to start counting lies at this point? It seems to me that your guy has had a lot more time to “rethink” his positions…And from what I can see, he pretty much does on a weekly basis.

    Forgive me if a corporation’s claims of losses does not seem all that credible as they pay their top executives millions for their “efforts” to earn their stockholders a profit…I am sure if I had teams of accountants working on my behalf, I could turn a loss on millions in revenue, too.

    Pardon me but I tend to bite the hand that feeds me on a regular basis…but since I use my own hands to feed myself, it only hurts for a while. Forgive my cynicism, but I place no trust in any corporation to do anything but try to maximize profits. I only place my faith in the oversight responsibility of the government whenever it isn’t controlled by Republicans.

    Yes I tend to the liberal side of life…Have a great weekend Jim.

  3. “Forgive me if a corporation’s claims of losses does not seem all that credible ” -Gary

    Wow, that’s convenient. If you don’t like the real news, then you can just discount the whole thing without one shred of evidence. Amazing. I sure am glad you’re supporting Obama.

Comments are closed.