More Stupid Tax Tricks

thumb_computer-dog.jpgNow that corporations have managed to get their glorified offshore outsourcing and tax haven bad trade deals, they are after the next thing, paying no taxes on profits made overseas. It's not enough multinationals made sure patents squeeze out the lone inventor and turned intellectual property into a glorified multinational shell game, they want more. Up next is their corporate tax holiday, complete with up is down lobbyist talking points, all to get yet another corporate giveaway through Congress.

David Cay Johnston calls the propaganda Orwellian:

Political tax talk is becoming Orwellian: Secrecy is Democracy. Auditors Reduce Collections. Tax Cheats Will Be Caught With Fewer Auditors.

Are people even awake? The lack of understanding on corporate taxes is so bad, the GOP frontrunner is a guy who created an ad slogan and campaign pushing the flat tax and because it's catchy, people love it. This is tax code, being sung like where's the beef and people have no idea they are humming the financial tune of their own economic destruction. Like any good front man, Herman Cain is a tool for the Koch Brothers:

Cain's economic ideas, support and organization have close ties to two billionaire brothers who bankroll right-leaning causes through their group Americans for Prosperity.

While that 9-9-9, $9.99 distraction is going on, Simon Johnson warns us of a new agenda to change the way the CBO assesses tax cuts real impact on the economy. Since it's so evident tax cuts do not pay for themselves in new economic growth, by the statistics and theory, the next idea is to change the accounting methods so it looks like they do.  I kid you not. This agenda to pervert the CBO is going on right now, in the budget super-committee, you know those legislators chosen to override Congressional votes and debate under the guise of budget deficit cuts. Simon Johnson:

Can tax cuts “pay for themselves” – inducing so much additional economic growth that government revenue actually increases, rather than decreases? The evidence clearly says no.

Nevertheless, a version of this idea, under the guise of “dynamic scoring,” has apparently surfaced in the supercommittee charged with deficit reduction – the joint congressional committee with 12 members. Dynamic scoring sounds technical or perhaps even scientific, but here the argument means simply that any pro-growth effect of tax cuts should be stressed when assessing potential policy changes (e.g., reforming the tax code). For anyone seriously concerned with fiscal responsibility, this is a dangerous notion.

Gets worse. David Cay Johnston reports what's brewing in Congress generally:

Bipartisan support is building for reducing corporate tax rates by at least 10 percentage points, from 35 percent to 25 percent or less. So is support for allowing repatriation of profits for companies that shifted them overseas to reduce taxes. The last time Congress did that, in 2004, it was sold with a promise it would create 660,000 jobs. Instead the benefiting companies fired more than 100,000 workers, several studies have shown.

There is also a bipartisan plan to further reduce already enfeebled tax law enforcement. The Senate plans to cut the IRS budget by $450 million, the House of Representatives by $600 million, meaning firing thousands of auditors.

Corporate power is so absolute, it doesn't seem to matter that the IRS is auditing multinational corporations like Google. Yup, the IRS is studying how corporations manipulate international tax codes through transfer pricing vehicles like the double dutch.

Nope, the top tax avoidance corporations are at it again, pushing their agendas through Congress without a care in the world, be it the IRS or the Populace protesting in the streets.

Rueters has a video of David Cay Johnston talking about the latest stupid tax tricks below.

 

 

Of course lobbyists, are out spewing fictional studies trying to claim another tax holiday will somehow help the economy. Bloomberg has the latest lobbyist count:

Companies are trying hard. The coalition and its members have more than 160 lobbyists working on the issue, including at least 60 who worked for a sitting member of the House or Senate, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News.

Think allowing corporations to repatriate money if and only if, every dollar is tied to hiring a U.S. Citizen for at least 2 years would gain any traction in Congress, or even the media? Of course not. Corporations don't want to use the money to hire U.S. Citizens so of course putting those types of conditions on a tax holiday is a non-starter.

That's right, our legislators aren't interested in anything that might actually force these multinational corporations to hire Americans.

Even Forbes, that bastion of corporate double speak acknowledges tax repatriation will not create jobs. Main stream media reporting on any legislation is about the political football. The new game of how long will it take corporate lobbyists to reach the goal of jamming more bad bills down the American collective throat.

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Lies on Tax Holidays Are Plants from Wall Street

Operatives from Morgan Stanley and others have planted articles in the NYTimes tax holiday and Atlantic on the tax holiday. The preposterous claim is that there can be no pre-conditions on tying the tax holiday to corporate behavior (does this behavior sound like the wine sippers watching OWS?). This proves that the Tax Holday scheme will never create a single U.S. Job. Why would the MNCs and banks want it?

- Get money out of Euros to Dollars
- 5% rate.
- Create a shell game to move the money back off-shore and even get new Foreign Tax credits!

Burton Leed

article plants

I'm positive you're right on corporations paying or writing articles and getting them published as "news". Be nice to have more documentation on how exactly this works.

I suspect publications are contacted and offered payment to publish an "article" from "so and so" or an author themselves are paid.

On this site we get similar requests, always turned down, trying to put an "ad" out there as news.