Top Corporate Tax Cheats: Corporate Behavior So Bad Even Fortune Magazine Can’t Stomach It

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/top-corporate-tax-cheats-corporate-behavior-so-bad-even-fortune-magazine-cant-stomach-it


A general view of the corporate headquarters of Comcast in downtown Philadelphia on February 23, 2014


Fortune Magazine is out with its list of “Top American corporate tax avoiders,” members of the S&P 500 that “sure seem American—except when it comes to paying taxes.”

These are companies that even a top cheerleader for the corporate class can’t bring itself to defend. What’s more, the list is accompanied by a blistering article by columnist Allan Sloan that makes the progressive case against corporate tax evasion as forcefully as anything Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren might say on the Senate floor.

There is “a new kind of American corporate exceptionalism,” he writes: “companies that have decided to desert our country to avoid paying taxes but expect to keep receiving the full array of benefits that being American confers, and that everyone else is paying for.”

Fortune includes on the list Eaton PLC, which produces a range of mechanical and electrical components, which has its U.S. headquarters in Cleveland but its “tax residence” in Ireland. Its CEO, Alexander Cutler, Fortune helpfully notes, “also happens to be a member of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, a nonpartisan organization that advocates cutting government spending and increasing tax revenue. He wants to close tax loopholes – but he sure isn’t proposing to return his corporation to full U.S. taxpaying status.”

[lovemydog]

1. As the article notes regarding tax reform:

One thing we should do is push for passage of legislation introduced by Sen. Carl Levin and Rep. Sandy Levin (both Michigan Democrats) that would make it harder for American corporations to merge with foreign corporations in a way that enables them to operate as if they are American corporations while claiming to be foreign for tax purposes.