American Corporations pay the lowest taxes in the entire developed world!
By louisehartmann
Pay no attention to the lies already coming from the Right – corporations are paying less in taxes in America than they’ve paid in 40 years. According to the Congressional Budget Office – despite American corporations making enormous profits last year – their second best in a generation - they paid on average only 12.1% in federal taxes. That’s far below the 35% corporate tax rate that Conservatives claim is crippling business in America. At 12.1%, American corporations are paying the lowest taxes in the entire developed world.
It’s also a staggering drop off since the last quarter century – between 1987 and 2008 – when corporations paid on average a 25.6% corporation tax rate. When corporations and the very, very wealthy aren’t paying their fair share in taxes, then working people have to pick up the slack. That’s exactly what’s happened in recent years – and one reason why the United States has one of the highest level of wealth inequality in the developed world – and why the middle class is disappearing right in front of our eyes.
Comments
#2
Maybe Santorum was going to say Government Negotiator, and thought because twice it wasn't harsh enough... but I doubt it. Blah... people eh Rick?
N
#3
When its listed as average corporate rate, it makes me wonder which businesses are paying more and which are paying less. It seems that I've heard that some extraordinarly large corporations (like oil and defense) pay nothing or next to nothing in tax. I can only extrapolate that smaller businesses get stuck paying more because of the lack of resources they have to pay for tax experts to avoid paying taxes. Which brings up one other thought, how much do these large corporations pay experts to avoid paying tax? Wonder what the difference in pay to those experts and the tax they should pay is?
N
#4
Ooh, a supermajority for the Supreme Court to strike down laws sounds like a good idea.
#5
Hey, Maxrot, I can tell your icon's messed up from being saved as a jpeg. Have you ever thought of cleaning it up and re-uploading it as a png?
#6
"Ulotriciously ugly" (with a /sh/ sound) is what I heard. The closest word I could find is "ulotrichous" (with a /k/ sound, and also the accent on the o) which means "(belonging to a group of people) with woolly or crisply curly hair". Sounds vaguely racist to use it as an adverb for "ugly", if you ask me.
#7
No, the right wing found a very effective tool in maintaining that if corporations have to pay taxes, there will be fewer jobs, and/or jobs will go overseas. Unfortunately, we are not living in an era of the brightest generation. Consider that since Reagan, several trillion taxpayer dollars have been redistributed upward, always on the promise that this would result in the creation of a mass of "good, family-supporting jobs." We don't seem to notice that this money continues to be used to build factories in foreign countries, exporting our jobs. We focused on "getting tough" on our powerless poor while ignoring what the richest few were doing to this country, and welcomed the Clinton policies that increased the number of people absolutely desperate for jobs while decreasing the number of jobs available. We have seen a massive number of jobs de-unionized, and broken down into pt. time, bottom wage jobs, and we still don't get it. Consider those who call themselves progressive today while supporting Hillary Clinton, who played a vital role in dismantling the New Deal/Great Society to help create a huge poverty-wage workforce here in the US. I do think it's a lost cause.
#8
"Trickle-down economics" should more properly be called "Flash-flood upward economics".
#9
So I guess that means, realistically, corporations will be paying NO tax should the "official" rate be lowered.
#10
What does it take to get the point across that corporations and businesses DON'T PAY TAXES, THEIR CUSTOMERS PAY THEM. And who are their customers, WE ARE!!!! Raising taxes, closing loopholes is nothing more than a tax increase on the middle class and poor. Big corporations could care less what their taxes are, they just PASS THEM ON TO THEIR CUSTOMERS. Small mom and pop businesses face the same choice as the rest of us, pay taxes or eat. Please stop misleading us by telling us corporations aren't people and then treat them like people when it comes to taxes.
Thank you
#11
We cannot tolerate the intolerant.
I work for a CEO who is a bonified psychopath/ sociopath.
#12
I believe most of them are "bonified psychopath/sociopaths"..not to mention "murderers for profit" of their employees. They gamble on the lives of their employees through something called "Dead Peasants Insurance". These gangsters in a suit and tie take out these insurance policies...betting that you will die....so they (not your relatives) can rake in lots of cash. And these gangsters can increase their odds of a pay off (even after you leave the company) by increasing your stress levels (a major killer) when you are in their employ and then further increase stress levels by laying you off...leaving you, perhaps, without medical insurance for you or your family.
And, typically, you can no longer afford keeping up life insurance payments* so you don't have life insurance. These gangsters are in collusion with the medical/health insurance companies because they can monitor the feedback as to your health and likely-hood of dying (especially if you don't have medical care...no insurance..no money...no medical care). So, these gangsters can rig the game so you will lose and your family will lose.
The family members usually don't even know about the "Dead Peasants Insurance" the company has on their employee, or laid off employee, and even if they did, they would not receive a cent from the company.
They want you, or your surviving relatives, to have no claims on the company..no health insurance...no life insurance..but then they hope you will die so that they can collect on the "Dead Peasants Insurance".
Not all companies do this, I suspect, I really don't know, but usually, when you find one company doing it...if there is a profit to be made in it, all companies will do it.
So when you wonder why these companies, your boss, perhaps, is driving your stress levels up just realize that they may actually be trying to kill you so they can profit off your death.
*When you leave your company, they tell you you can continue the same health insurance coverage, for a short while, you had when you were with the company. But, "these premiums are so expensive" they warn you that "you would be better off finding your own health insurance somewhere else".
#13
David32, corporations are taxed on their profits, not their revenue. So if they don't gouge their customers, they get taxed little, if they do gouge their customers they get taxed more.
#14
I agree that businesses will just pass the "costs" like taxes along to their customers..just like they do everything else...like being on the losing end of a law suit...or disasters. The system is all screwed up to let these psychopaths live high on the hog and make everyone else suffer and pay. What we have here is a failure of capitalism...or as Michael Moore would put it....Crapitalism. Capitalism (aka: Crapitalism) has finally degenerated into a cesspool of ugly and smelly slime....and unless we clean it up the world will end up an infectious, pustuled carrion of degenerated inbred Crapitalist Emperors (picture Baron Harkonnen of Dune) ruling over the starving and dying masses.
Yes, let's tax the Krap out of these Crapitolists and throw most of them into a dark, dank cell...take away their ill-gotten gains to be given back to the people from whence it was stolen.
#15
We have a very uncomfortable history, especially in the last 30 or so years, of politicians meekly trying to get the wealthy to act responsibly...and all they get in return is a good back-stabbing. The wealthy take the people's money (through taxes...because it is the people who pay the taxes...not the wealthy who use loop holes...and buy off Congress for tax favoritism) and then give the people the shaft. They always get what they want and then renege on the deal...if there ever was a real quid pro quo to begin with. The people are made to think that there is a quid pro quo...but are always screwed in the end.
#16
And Mathboy, where to they get the money to pay those taxes? From their CUSTOMERS, so who is paying the tax, the CUSTOMER. I believe McDonalds trains their employees that EVERYTHING they get is PAID for by the CUSTOMER!!!!! A corporations profits comes from the corporation's CUSTOMERS. Do you think they have a money tree out back that they use to pay taxes,separate from the customers money? Corporate taxation is totally amoral, the taxing authorities could care less whether customers get gouged. The customer is completely responsibe for making the decision whether he/she is being gouged, no one else.
#17
Please don't confuse my comments as applying the the greedy CEO's and overpaid employees. When the CEO to average employee wage ratio has increased ten to twenty fold since the 70's it should be obvious to anyone that corporate boards are far to liberal with CEO salaries.
So I do agree, tax the people not the corporation, if executives feel severe pain maybe the ration will go down to a reasonable amount.
So let's keep corporate taxation and CEO/executive taxation separate.
#18
This is what OWS is all about. It's time 'We the People" put an end to the money in politics. It's time we elect representatives that will bow to the will of the people, not leaders who have a distorted perception of the world like Paul Ryan's worship of the sociopath Ayn Rand.
#19
This is what OWS is all about. It's time 'We the People" put an end to the money in politics. It's time we elect representatives that will bow to the will of the people, not leaders who have a distorted perception of the world like Paul Ryan's worship of the sociopath Ayn Rand.
#20
Is this reason nobama and the damnrats have spent so much on worthless projects??? Solyndra etc etc etc And would nobama really want a punk ass kid like trayvon with our cash for clunkers president!!!! Face, he is totally worthless and completely dangerous!!
I'd like to send me kid on an AF plane to Mexico with 25 secret service agents!!! Story is being spiked by nobama buddies in the media But here's one they didn't get
And would he now say that trayvon would be a kid like his gold teeth, ink, and a tweet account no_limit_nigga http://www.theblaze.com/stories/is- this-trayvon-martins-twitter-account/
Is this true? If so, this sweet young thing is a POS>>>> is a REAL POS!!!!
SCREW THE "KING" make him a one termer and send the sob back to Kenya!!!
#21
Not that I am defending Obama or the Democrats....but I view the situation from the other angle...I believe they (Obama and the Democrats) let us down because they have not been liberal or progressive at all. In fact, they are really far right of center. In some ways, I see Obama even further right of many RepubliCONS.
The cry baby, foot stomping, Desk Pounding, RepublicCONS are all treasonous to the majority of Americans. And they would all let the majority of hard working Americans, and those who are retired or who lost their jobs because the corporate criminals sent the jobs overseas, suffer and die.
It is unfortunate that some delusional Americans are being used as useful idiots for the wealthy in this country. They obviously watch too much Fox Snooze.
I put Obama right in with the Republicans, right in with that coke-snorting, drunk, war criminal named Bush who wore Jesus on his sleeve to wheedle his way to the top with the help of his wealthy and powerful crime family. But that is one thing that Obama differs from Bush...Obama wasn't born with a silver foot in his mouth like Bush was. He had to work his way up from the bottom. He didn't have a rich daddy to bail him out or buy him into the Presidency like Bush did. Obama didn't have a stacked Supreme Court or a Brother Governor of Florida to scam his way into the Presidency like Bush did.
I would have had more respect for Obama had he been more of the man we all voted for. Bush was a brain-fart of a President that lied to us and got us into the extremely costly and wasteful wars that we have been fighting for almost 10 years now...costing us way, way more than any Solyndra ever would. And the original bank bailouts was caused by the casino capitalist system that the Republicans connived and finally achieved...even though it was technically on Clinton's watch...it was till largely spearheaded by Republicans. But, of course, the Democrats deserve a lot of blame on this as well.
I'd say Bush was a typical loud-mouthed ignoramus who fried his brains on booze and drugs and who was spoiled rotten to the core by his rich family. I believe he watched Forest Gump too many times and still couldn't manage to act as intelligent as Forest Gump was in the movie. Forest Gump was fictional, of course, but I'm sure Bush was trying to pick up a few pointers.
I highly suspect...and believe that Bush was part of the neocon overthrow of the government in the US .... the master-minding, engineering, financing and causing the 911 false flag operation. Bush was the loud mouthed figurehead that would go along with what was already planned. And he was a big blow-hard who made a lot of chicken hawk bravado bloviations.
The 911 false flag operation by the neocons, of course, would be High Treason and mass murder on the part of those insiders responsible. And Obama just "let it go" like he just didn't have the balls to call for a real investigation of 911 and the Bush administration war criminal lies that got us into the illegal war.
#22
Looks like you right-wing fundies are going to be voting for, and perhaps, bowing down before some guy who wears "magic underwear" and gets secret messages of inspiration by burying his face, perhaps, into the darkness of a brimmed hat. And for anyone who has watched the TV HBO series Big Love... remember, after Bill Henrickson (played by Bill Paxton), the fundamentalist polygamous Mormon with his 3 wives won the Utah Republican Senate, sprang the big surprise on everyone..going public, after he was elected, that he was polygamous and had 3 wives in defiance of the law against polygamy. What surprises do you suppose old Mitt will spring on us...if he were President? You RepubliCONS have a ball calling Obama a Muslim. Just wait till Mitt Romney wins the election. Bite my tongue! So let's all make sure that we vote for Obama...like it or not..because we sure don't want that job destroying magic man (evil sorcerer?) at the helm of this already sinking ship.
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
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