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Saturday, May 18, 2013

Here's your real IRS scandal, ladies and gentlemen


That phony, bogus, trumped-up IRS scandal that's going around right now by the Republicans and "All Who Hate Obama"?

That's just what it is, phony.

George W. Bush had just the same situation and his administration went after far more groups, too.

And forget that this same IRS, now, also went after Liberal groups. Sure, forget or ignore that.

Here's the real IRS, America--it's companies not paying taxes, period and cheating you and I:

Another aspect of the real tax scandal that's being ignored: Google, Amazon, Starbucks, every other major corporation, and every big Wall Street bank, are sheltering as much of their U.S. profits abroad as they can, while telling Washington that lower corporate taxes are necessary in order to keep the U.S. "competitive." Baloney. The fact is, global corporations have no allegiance to any country; their only objective is to make as much money as possible -- and play off one country against another to keep their taxes down and subsidies up.

I'm in London for a few days, and all the talk here is about how Goldman Sachs just negotiated a sweetheart deal to settle a tax dispute with the British government; Google is manipulating its British sales to pay almost no taxes here by using its low-tax Ireland subsidiary (the chair of the Parliamentary committee investigating this has just called the do-no-evil firm "devious, calculating, and unethical"); Amazon has been found to route its British sales through a subsidiary in low-tax Luxembourg, and now receives more in subsidies from the British government than it pays here in taxes; Starbucks' tax-avoidance strategy was so blatant British consumers began boycotting the firm until it reversed course. 

As global capital becomes ever more powerful, giant corporations are holding governments up for ransom -- eliciting subsidies and tax breaks from governments concerned about their nation's "competitiveness" -- while sheltering their profits in the lowest-tax jurisdictions they can find. Major advanced countries need a comprehensive tax agreement that won't allow global corporations to get away with this."


--Robert Reich, economist, author, professor, columnist for The New York Times

The least corporations and the wealthy could do--the least--is pay some minimum amount, say, 10% of profits, at least, no matter what other deductions they take so we can pay, as a nation, for our schools and infrastructure and so they can have access to our markets.

But that would make sense.

Links:


Robert Reich - Wikipedia


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