Transplanting Taxes from Corporations to the Rest of Us

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/04/03-7



Today, corporate profits are setting all-time records while middle class families continue to struggle financially. These trends are intertwined.

Whether you’ve clicked to send your tax forms to the IRS along the cyber-highway or dropped your return in the old-fashioned blue mailbox, you’ll be paying extra to cover the growing amount of taxes that the nation’s clever corporations are shunting onto individual taxpayers.

Officially, the U.S. corporate tax rate stands at 35 percent, but in practice it’s far lower. Corporations have lots of tricks in their box of tax-avoidance tools.

Consider Pfizer’s track record. The drugmaker increased its offshore profits by $10 billion in 2012, boosting its offshore stash to $73 billion — all of it untaxed by Uncle Sam. Like most pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer registers its patents in a low-tax offshore haven, and then charges a high price for the use of this “intellectual property.” Doing so, it shifts all of its U.S. profits offshore, avoiding U.S. taxes and bloating its overseas bank account.

[Trillo]

1. That graphic is kind of painful to look at and think about.

Keep crackin' that whip....

[nc4bo]

3. The truth is often painful to look at and think about.

What have we done to change any of it? Have we actually made any meaningful changes to the status quo?

The almighty job creators and skanky 1%ers..............

[WillyT]

2. K & R !!!

[DirtyDawg]

4. The strategy...

...of creating a separate profit-center/company in a country - or US state like Delaware - that doesn't tax incomes of corporations, to house all your ' intellectual properties', then to charge all the corporate entities a royalty for their use, is not a new concept...but it certainly is a profitable one. And by the way, usually the primary 'property' that they charge for is simply for the use of the damn name of the company. So, for example, the 'rate payers' of a state where a, say, telephone company, did business - and with the full knowledge of said state's Public Service Commission - were charged an additional 5% for their service for no other reason than the parent company conjured up this elaborate 'tax dodge' just for hanging the name 'Bell' on their trucks and invoices. A strategy that as netted hundreds of millions to the corporations' bottom line over the years.