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Loading...Top 10 US Corporate Tax Avoiders Named on Senate Floor
Despite complaints about the U.S.’s burdensome 35% corporate tax rate, two-thirds of American corporations pay no taxes in a given year. In a speech last week on the Senate floor, Senator Bernie Sanders (I) of Vermont called out the top 10 corporate tax avoiders:
Among those actually getting money back from the Feds:
- ExxonMobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009, paid no federal income taxes, received a $156 million rebate
- Bank of America received a $1.9 billion IRS refund despite $4.4 billion of profits
- General Electric had $26 billion in profits, and $4.1 billion refund (GE made it onto another top 10 list of top corporate lobbyists in 2010, spending $39 million)
- Chevron nabbed a $19 million refund after making $10 billion in profits
Wall Street made the list as well; the Senator’s office notes,”Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.”
Spreading the Burden, if not the Wealth
Given the nation’s $1.6 trillion deficit, Senator Sanders suggests that the burden of deficit reduction be shared more equally, rather than hurting working people, sick children, and others ill-equipped for optimal lobbying.
Senator Sanders has called for eliminating corporate tax loopholes and getting rid of tax breaks for oil and gas companies. He has introduced a bill that would raise an estimated $50 billion through an “emergency” 5.4 percent extra tax on people with adjusted gross incomes of over one million dollars.
Sharing the pain…not happening
Senator Sanders says that serious times call for shared sacrifice. Those are beautiful words, but sharing sacrifice seems like a fairy tale in a country where the top five percent own nearly two-thirds of our nation’s wealth.
Despite the Supreme Court ‘s finding that corporations are basically people in the eyes of the law, corporations themselves cannot be moral or immoral — they are entities, not sentient beings. We have a system that rewards the gamers, where winners take all, and influence peddling is rife; where the defense for a highly profitable company not paying taxes is that it is within the law. As American families face the looming April 15 tax deadline, it is tough to hear corporations claim that mere compliance is enough in a system where laws and loopholes can be bought and sold.
Read more: Chevron, compliance, corporate personhood, corporations, exxon, ge, general electric, goldman, loophole, millionaire, politics, surtax, tax, tax avoider
Photo: Senator Bernie Sanders via YouTube
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Recent Comments from Causes
bet he's happy to get off that thing.
You got that right to the core of the issue.Excelent work.Thank you for sharing!!
Fadi, you are no more vegan than I am, and believe me, I'm not vegan. If you eat EITHER fish or honey,…
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+ add your ownA government that owns the bank does not have to rely on taxing the people so the private bank owners such as Rothschild pay no tax and then are given the privilege to milk the pockets of the citizens as well. its time people woke up and withdrew their energy from these criminals.
Time for everyone to pay their fair share.
Thank you for the information.
Enact a financial transaction tax.
Close loopholes. Insist that profit-makers buy taxes.
Kathryn E.
12:25pm PST on Dec 9, 2011
You want to look at our history and find out when the best years for the average worker was in the 50's and 60's and the highest tax rates were in the 90%
The problem is that the argument over the marginal tax rate is entirely spurious. The argument needs to focus on effective tax rates. No one ever paid out 91% even when that was the top marginal rate. The game was to set asinine tax rates and then fill the tax code with breaks for preferred individuals or groups, or those who could afford tax lawyers who could wade through it, all while giving the rest of us the illusion they were taxing the snot out of the rich. The most important step is to clean up the tax code so we can approach the questions raised by Senator Sanders with a workable way to establish an actual tax rate free of manipulation through legal chicanery.
You can discover anarchy by having laws so complex that no one can understand them. This seems to be exactly what we have done.
The problem with politics is when evaluating congress, their approval rate is under 20 % but when evaluated by their constituents, their marks aren't so bad. Meaning they will get re-elected. It is a corrupt system that people simply overlook and those who care are just a few. Only hope and efforts by those who care will make change someday possible. This dragon must be slayed but only intelligent and caring individuals will do so. It is a monster that feeds itself from his own constituents. Merry HOLIDAYS to all.
Well these corporations have spent the last 30 years lobbing for tax breaks and loopholes. You want to look at our history and find out when the best years for the average worker was in the 50's and 60's and the highest tax rates were in the 90% and the GOP lies about the USA being the worst place for Corporations when we are the 3rd from the top and our economy is going down the drain and they think taxing them will hurt us; well what really hurt us was when Congress started to deregulate everything and they scream that it's so bad for corporations in this country all a bunch of lies and they continue to say it when the rich and the corporations have the lowest taxes since what brought on the Great Depression and we are headed there my friends. To many people really believe all these lies I have no idea what is wrong with them.
We don't need this huge standing military that is insane but don't try to cut that because that is some sacred cow. Where is the backbone in this country these days that they can scare us to death and bring on wars and more wars because they keep telling us that we are going to have some ideology take us over; from the communist, to the terrorist today does anyone understand what has happen to the fearless Americans that we have given up our rights as citizens in the USA to all the fear that is tossed out at us all day long on our 24/7 supposed to be news media?
Yes we out to be out protesting to take back our country.
Trickle up!!!!!
thanks
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