Did corporations at least give their workers a bump-up in pay? Hardly. Well then surely the corps shelled out a little more in taxes to help refurbish the nation's infrastructure, which they and their workers use daily. (I refer of course to the highways, bridges, schools, libraries, and parks.) Guess again. The fact is that US corporations are sitting on nearly $2 trillion of cash, not sure what to do with it except hide more of it offshore. They can't expand production because, after years of rising prices, and falling wages for the bottom 80%, the necessary consumer demand is just not there. Surprise, surprise.
Now look at this report just published by the Public Interest Research Group, on how average citizens and small businesses have to pay for the $90 billion that giant companies "save" by hiding profits in offshore tax havens. Among the 83 publicly traded corporations named, is Pfizer, which for the past five years reported no taxable income in the US, even as it made 40% of its sales here!
Also Microsoft, which avoided $4.5 billion in taxes over three years by miraculously shifting its income to Puerto Rico. Yet another: Citigroup, which maintains 20 "subsidiaries' in tax havens and has over $42 billion sitting off-shore. Taxes collected here at home on that $42 billion? Zero -- thanks to Joe Sixpack and other working-stiff taxpayers . . who got stiffed with this bill and many others like it!
But it's not only corporations that are stashing their swag offshore. The Center for Public Integrity in Washington and its International Consortium of Investigative Journalists recently got their hands on two and a half million files from offshore bank accounts and shell companies set up around the world by the wealthy. Among those documents are the names of 4,000 Americans who hid their money in secret tax havens so that the rest of us could pay the taxes on it.
Here's how they do it:
Set up a secret company using one of hundreds of off-shore locations. The British Virgin Islands, for example, is home to half a million offshore companies. There you can buy a ready-made shell company or create your own secret company from scratch in about three days, for just over $1,000. You may be asked to produce documents to establish your identity and they might check your name in a database, to see if you're a terrorist. But that's it.
So it shouldn't surprise us to learn that the United States actually collects less in taxes as a share of its economy than all but two other industrialized countries! Only Chile and Mexico collect less. Chile and Mexico!
So appreciate this: Right now a powerful group of CEO's, multi-millionaires and billionaires, are calling on Congress to "fix the debt." And their puppet politicians (paid stooges) in both parties are glad to oblige. But fix the debt by raising more taxes from those who can most afford to pay? Of course not. Close the loopholes? No way! Shut down the tax havens? Not a chance! Cancel the Mitt Romney Clause that Congress enacted, allowing big winners to pay a tax rate far less than that of their chauffeurs, nannies, and gardeners? Are you nuts?! --big corps and billionaires are their primary campaign donors! Why bite the hand that feeds you?
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