How Big Companies Beat US Taxation

The President’s State of the Union address in January is always fun to watch. It is entertaining to see our elected officials acting like school boys and girls snickering beneath their breath at the whole show. It’s an opportunity for any President to grandstand and propose those things that everyone knows we need and at the same time understand that the proposals are just for fun and don’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hades of passage. The tax part of the speech has led many commentators to use the phrase DOA( Dead on Arrival). Taxing the rich will not happen in the now House and Senate republican controlled houses. That is nothing new. The Proposal to have a one time tax of 14% on domestic corporations that have been stuffing overseas coffers with billions without paying a dime in federal taxes is of course more offensive to those well heeled congress persons. Companies like G.E. ($110 billion), Microsoft ($74 billion), Pfizer ( $69 billion) and Apple ($54 billion) have been doing it for years and it is all above board and legal. Consider a little old lady who inherited a foreign account with $50, 000.00 in it when a great aunt died. She is taxed on the income from that account in the USA even if she spends not one cent. She may also end up doing hard time in a federal prison if she did not declare on her tax return both the income from that account and the fact she had an interest in such a foreign account. In light of the games corporations like the giants above seem to be allowed to play the old lady in a striped orange jumper seems unfair if not down right hypocritical. But that one time tax on corporate overseas stockpiles is also for the rubbish can and was just for our viewing pleasure. The country does need tax reform in the corporate area and the big companies want it. They’d like a simpler system just not anything that could in any way raise their tax bill and lower their bottom line.