If Corporations Don’t Pay Taxes, Why Should You?

[SHRED]

Posted on Mar 12, 2013


AP/Mark Lennihan
Dancers stage the Microsoft logo against the side of a building in New York.

By Robert Scheer

Go offshore young man and avoid paying taxes. Plunder at will in those foreign lands, and if you get in trouble, Uncle Sam will come rushing to your assistance, diplomatically, financially and militarily, even if you have managed to avoid paying for those government services. Just pretend you’re a multinational corporation.

That’s the honest instruction for business success provided by 60 of the largest U.S. corporations that, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, “parked a total of $166 billion offshore last year” shielding more than 40 percent of their profits from U.S. taxes. They all do it, including Microsoft, GE and pharmaceutical giant Abbott Laboratories. Many, like GE, are so good at it that they have avoided taxes altogether in some recent years.

But they all still expect Uncle Sam to come to their aid with military firepower in case the natives abroad get restless and nationalize their company’s assets. We still have a blockade against Cuba because Fidel Castro more than a half century ago dared seize an American-owned telephone company. During that same period, we have consistently intervened to maintain the lock of U.S. corporations on the world’s resources, continuing to the present task of making Iraq and Libya safe for our oil companies.

America’s multinational corporations still need the Navy to protect shipping lanes and the Commerce Department to safeguard U.S. copyrights. They also expect the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department to intervene to provide bailouts and cheap money when the corporate financial swindlers get into trouble, like GE, which almost went aground when its GE Capital financial wing got caught in the great banking meltdown.

CONTINUED:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/its_good_to_be_the_multinational_corporations_20130312/


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[xchrom]

1. du rec. nt

[Warren Stupidity]

2. I'm pretty sure I should because prison is rather awful.

[SemperEadem]

3. Oh, I agree, but I don't have bottomless pockets to pay lawyers

to keep my ass out of prison...

the rules are different for the 99%.

[JayhawkSD]

4. Well, nobody should pay taxes

because after a hurricane, who needs federal disaster relief. Taxes are bad.

[ReRe]

5. The CIA was the advance team, afterall...

K&R

... so the Multi-National Corps could rape the effing earth. If the leadership of the 3rd world country didn't go along, they made 'em a deal they couldn't refuse. And if the country's leader did refuse, he/she was knocked off and a leader who would go along with our Multi-Nationals was installed. Then it was "Come on down!"

Seriously, here it is tax time and all of us are compiling, tabulating, filing our taxes. Why DO we have to pay our taxes, when Corps don't pay taxes?

[nevergiveup]

6. I am a small corporation with 3 employees.

I don't receive any tax breaks to speak of and in fact this year I will once again be paying more taxes than General Electric. I don't own a yacht either. I don't even have a fishing boat.

[SomeGuyInEagan]

7. Tariffs, perhaps?

I'll be the first to say I really don't know much about tariffs, other than they are a tax on goods imported into the country.

But would love to hear more from more knowledgable folks here - pros, cons, history of tariffs in this country.

[indepat]

8. Because the Congress often doesn't require persons in the form of large highly profitable

corporations to pay any income taxes whereas should a person type of person not pay their income taxes, big brother would be all over him or her like ugly on an ape. And some don't even seem to realize the workings of a corporatist government.