Cross posted from The Pop Tort by Joe Consumer
So while average Americans struggle through tough economic times, corporate America continues to find new ways to loot the federal treasury!
One way is “tort reform,” of course. It should be pretty obvious to all that proposals to limit public access to the civil justice system do not eliminate injuries or the need for compensation. They merely shift the costs away from a corporate wrongdoer onto someone else - like taxpayers!
Now it turns out, they’re not paying taxes either! Time Magazine reports:
Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress.
The study by the Government Accountability Office, expected to be released Tuesday, said about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period.
Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO's estimate.
"It's shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who asked for the GAO study with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.
…
More than 38,000 foreign corporations had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million U.S. companies paid no income tax, the GAO said. Combined, the companies had $2.5 trillion in sales. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts.
Oh, and let’s give a special shout out to the credit card industry “which is poised to be the next big crisis (after housing) that banks have aided and abetted in US households.” This industry not only wrecks people’s lives, it then takes away their recourse in the courts with mandatory binding arbitration!
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