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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumschase down mega rich tax cheats and recover the offshore trillion$
http://www.nationofchange.org/chase-down-mega-rich-tax-cheats-and-recover-offshore-trillion-1365341763I mean it. Stop talking about cutting school budgets, Social Security benefits, Medicare, Veterans pensions. Stop cutting subsidies to transit systems, to foreign aid. Stop cutting unemployment benefits. Stop it all. There can not be any justification for budget cutting while wealthy criminals, corrupt politicians and business executives are hiding what reportedly totals between $29 trillion and $32 trillion in offshore tax havens.
A massive data dump by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), working in conjunction with dozens of news organizations around the globe, has exposed the secret files of over 120,000 dummy offshore companies that have been used for years to hide the wealth -- much of it ill-gotten, all of it tax-dodged -- of the worlds rich and mega-rich.
Before we go further, lets think about those numbers, which are really mind-boggling.
The US annual federal budget for 2012 was $3.7 trillion. The total US economy, largest in the world by far, was $15.8 trillion in 2012. That federal budget deficit that we hear so much about, which is growing by $1 trillion a year, totals about $16 trillion.
randome
(34,845 posts)The only thing this shows is that we need better regulations regarding these off-shore havens.
Define 'dummy corporations' better. Make it more expensive to take the money off-shore. It isn't stealing when Congress opens the doors and says, 'Take what you want'.
FreakinDJ
(17,644 posts)I've been saying it here on DU for years now, and these are the same Loop Holes that make "Off Shoring" our jobs so profitable too
bhikkhu
(10,708 posts)...something Obama has been trying to do.
Newest Reality
(12,712 posts)about 11-trillion dollars in taxes at, say, 36%, not including penalties and fines if the amount out there was 32-trillion dollars.
Wow.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)It's not like we don't know their names, and can't determine exactly who's done what.
Ask yourself: who actually did more damage to the U.S. economy: Osama bin Laden or Hank Greenberg, the CEO of AIG?
Coyotl
(15,262 posts)Each state has different laws on taxation. Some states do not tax corporate income the same as others, so guess where they "say" they are conducting business?
This is a very complex problem and there are some very straight-forward solutions involving closing loopholes the special interests have created for themselves and all their rich chronies.