Taxes

Hungarians Protest Internet Tax

October 24, 2014 Andrea Fiscutean, www.zdnet.com Resist! Hungary, Internt, Taxes

Hungary is planning to tax internet traffic from the beginning of 2015, according to a bill submitted to parliament on Tuesday. The draft bill stipulates that ISPs will pay 150 forints (€0.49) for every gigabyte of data traffic over their network. Hungarian authorities have said that they will make sure that the new tax will be paid by ISPs only, rather than internet users themselves. The legislation is facing harsh criticism from both consumers and companies, and a street protest against the bill has been planned for later this week. An 'internet tax' will send Hungary back to the 1990s, the country's opposition E-PM alliance said in a statement.

IRS Whistleblowers: Corporations Allowed To Not Pay Billions In Taxes

October 24, 2014 Nafeez Ahmed, www.truth-out.org Educate! Corporatism, IRS, Taxes

A 10-year veteran Internal Revenue Service (IRS) attorney has demanded a congressional audit of the IRS to investigate the agency's alleged role in allowing US corporations to illegally avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes even as it cracks down on individuals and small businesses. In a letter to Treasury secretary Jacob Lew, IRS commissioner John A. Koskinen and IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, Jane J. Kim, an attorney in the IRS Office of the Chief Counsel in New York, accused IRS executives of "deliberately" facilitating multibillion-dollar tax giveaways. The letter, dated October 19, will add further pressure on the agency, which is under fire for allegedly targeting conservative and Tea Party groups.

Nuclear Power’s Insanities: Taxpayer-Guaranteed

September 8, 2014 The Nader Page, www.blog.nader.org Educate! Fukushima, Nuclear Power, Radiation, Taxes

The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) – the corporate lobbyist in Washington, D.C. for the disintegrating atomic power industry – doesn’t have to worry about repercussions from the negative impacts of nuclear power. For nuclear power is a government/taxpayer-guaranteed boondoggle whose staggering costs, incurred and deferred, are absorbed by American taxpayers via a supine government regulatory and subsidy apparatus. So if you go to work at the NEI and you read about the absence of any permanent radioactive waste storage site, no problem, the government/taxpayers are responsible for transporting and safeguarding that lethal garbage for centuries. If your reactors experience ever larger cost over-runs and delays, as is now happening with two new reactors in South Carolina, no problem, the supine state regulatory commissions will just pass the bill on to consumers, despite the fact that consumers receive no electricity from these unfinished plants. If these plants, and two others in Georgia under construction, experience financial squeezes from Wall Street, no problem, a supine Congress has already passed ample taxpayer loan guarantees that make Uncle Sam (you the taxpayer) bear the cost of the risk.

The Biggest Tax Scam Ever

August 31, 2014 Tim Dickinson, www.rollingstone.com Educate! Corporate Welfare, Corporatism, Finance and the Economy, Taxes

This is the reality of our political system in 2014: In what should be a titanic battle between multinational corporate power and federal power, our elected representatives are hardly putting up a fight. Obama has been a sharp critic of corporate tax avoidance. Yet the offshore corporate earnings stash has nearly doubled on his watch. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has unleashed blistering attacks on corporations like Walgreens that have threatened to renounce their U.S. citizenship for tax purposes. And he has said he's "ready to roll" on a vote for a (sure-to-fail) Democratic bill that seeks a two-year moratorium on inversions. Yet Reid has also been shopping a stand-alone tax-holiday proposal, rewarding multinational tax avoiders with a 9.5 percent rate. Reid's partner in this effort? Kentucky Republican Rand Paul – who's been courting right-wing billionaire David Koch.

Profiles Of War Tax Resisters

August 27, 2014 NWTRCC, www.nwtrcc.org Resist! Civil Disobedience, Taxes, Wars and Militarism

Cathy Depp (August, 2013) had her first run-in with the IRS as a direct result of refusing the federal excise tax on telephone service, which was increased by President Lyndon Johnson to help pay for the war in Vietnam. Although LBJ said we could have guns and butter too, we would have to pay for both. My husband and I were University of Illinois graduate students, living on next to nothing anyway but both determined our tax dollars should fight a different kind of war — the “war on poverty” Johnson had promised to wage. As conscientious objectors, we were part of a growing movement to resist the war through refusal to fight for it and refusal to pay for it. [read more] Aanya Adler Friess (June, 2013) has been resisting war taxes since the 1960s. At age 86, she no longer attends meetings on a regular basis, though she lives below the taxable income level. She discusses war tax resistance with activists from the organizations that make up Albuquerque’s Peace and Justice Organizations Linking Arms (PAJOLA), of which she is a founding member. [read more] Andrea Ayvazian (February, 2013). When asked about who I am, how to introduce myself, I fumble around and use some or all of these words — I am the proud mother of Sasha Klare-Ayvazian (now 24); I am a woman of faith, a long-time activist for peace, social justice, environmental sanity, and an anti-racist world; I am an ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ, a former Quaker, a singer, songwriter and poet. [read more]

Burger King Fans Call For Boycott After Tax Dodge

August 26, 2014 Jillian Berman and Alexander C. Kaufman, www.huffingtonpost.com Organize! Burger King, Canada, Protest, Taxes

Burger King is getting whopped over its plan to avoid U.S. taxes by fleeing to Canada. People flooded the fast-food chain’s Facebook page on Monday with threats of a boycott after the company announced talks to merge with Canadian coffee and doughnut chain Tim Hortons. The combined company would be headquartered in Canada. Burger King is just the latest American company to attempt a so-called tax inversion -- where a bigger U.S. company buys a smaller foreign firm in a country with a lower tax rate, renounces its U.S. corporate citizenship and then reincorporates in the other nation. Politicians and pundits have said the moves amount to little more than unpatriotic ploys to avoid paying taxes. The corporate tax rate in the U.S. is 35 percent, the highest in the world. Canada's is about 15 percent. "Move to Canada to avoid paying taxes and I will never darken the door of a Burger King again," Mike Gee, of Magnolia, Arkansas, wrote in a comment. "Does corporate greed in this country ever end?" Radina Russell, a Burger King spokeswoman, declined to comment. Taxes aren't Tim Hortons' only appeal to the Miami-based burger chain. The company sells a lot of coffee and doughnuts, and Burger King has struggled to compete with rivals McDonald's and Taco Bell in the fast-food war over breakfast. It's not clear how much the move to Canada would reduce tax costs on the combined company. But the deal would allow it to avoid paying double taxes on profits earned abroad, even though the company would still pay U.S. taxes on domestic sales.

Sharing Commonwealth Equitably Now Essential

August 11, 2014 Steven Rosenfeld, www.alternet.org Educate! Finance and the Economy, Inequality, Poverty, Taxes

Steven Rosenfeld: Your book starts with a very sober assessment of the American middle-class. It’s shrinking. It’s disappearing in our lifetime. And the reason is that most work-related income is not enough. It’s insufficient and that’s getting worse. Tell me about that. Peter Barnes: One can throw out all the numbers, but rather than do that, just think back. Some of us, like myself, are old enough to remember when there were lots of good-paying steady jobs, both in the private sector and public sector. They had benefits, covered health insurance, and provided pensions. That was what the middle-class was built on when I was growing up. Now, for a variety of reasons, including globalization, and automation, and the decline of labor unions, that is no longer the case. And most of the younger people who are entering the labor market today don’t get jobs like that. It’s kind of a “you’re on your own economy.” Everybody temps. They have more than one job. They’re always marketing themselves on LinkedIn or something like that to get the next job. They don’t get health coverage. They have to pay for their own pensions and so forth. On top of which, education costs are way up. Students have debts they have to pay. All these things are different and they are not changing. They are going down, not up, as far as the middle-class goes.

Walgreens Backs Down After Threat Of Boycott

August 6, 2014 Mark Kleinman, www.news.sky.com Resist! Organizing, Taxes, Walgreens

Walgreens Will Remain Headquartered in US After Planning Move Outside of the Country to Avoid Taxes One of America's biggest corporate names is poised to bow to intense US political pressure by retaining its headquarters in the US even as it secures a full takeover of Boots, Britain's biggest pharmacy chain. Sky News can exclusively reveal that Walgreens, the giant drug-stores group, will announce as soon as today that it plans to acquire the remaining 55% of Alliance Boots that it does not already own in a deal costing in the region of £5bn. However, sources on both sides of the Atlantic said that Walgreens is likely to disclose as part of its announcement that it intends to remain a US-domiciled company rather than pursuing a so-called tax inversion which would involve moving its corporate headquarters to the UK or Switzerland. The news will represent a significant victory for President Obama, who said recently that US companies which moved their headquarters overseas to save tax were damaging the country’s economy. "My attitude is I don't care if it's legal, it's wrong," he said in July.

The Bad Boss Tax

July 27, 2014 Sarah Jaffe, www.inthesetimes.com Organize! Taxes, Worker Rights and Jobs, Worker's Rights

Can you name the worst job you’ve ever had? For Cliff Martin, that’s not an easy question. All three of his current jobs—delivering newspapers, delivering magazines and working as a janitor—are strong contenders. Taken together, they pay so poorly that the 20-year-old Northfield, Minnesota, native relies on MNsure, the state Medicaid plan, for healthcare and lives at home with his father to save money. But what if Martin’s bosses had to fork over a fee to the state for paying him so badly? That money, in turn, could be used to help support Martin and his fellow low-wage workers in a variety of ways, from direct subsidies for food and housing to social programs such as Medicaid or public transportation. Take Action Minnesota, a network that promotes economic and racial justice in the state, wants to make that fee a reality. It’s developing the framework for a bill that it hopes will be introduced in 2015 by state legislators who have worked with the network in the past. As conceived, the “bad business fee” legislation would require companies to disclose how many of their employees are receiving public assistance from the state or federal government. Companies would then pay a fine based on the de facto subsidies they receive by externalizing labor costs onto taxpayers.

Boycott Walgreens: The Tax-Dodger On The Corner

July 25, 2014 Eugene Lim, www.suntimes.com Resist! Corporatism, health, Taxes, Walgreens

Since learning that Walgreens may move its headquarters overseas, we’ve heard most from its shareholders, its executives, and politicians in Illinois and Washington. We haven’t heard much from the general public, much of which is still struggling economically in the wake of the recession and all of which stands to lose out when US corporations dodge taxes. Walgreens, if we let it, will become the latest in a string of companies to exploit an accounting trick called “inversion,” which will allow the company to move its corporate address to a known tax haven. It will also become inversion’s most shameless exploiter: nearly a quarter of the company’s revenues come from Medicare and Medicaid, and its profits soared by 68 percent when Obamacare brought it new customers last quarter. Yet, Walgreens may decide as soon as August to renounce its “corporate citizenship,” become Swiss only in name, and slash its tax rate from 31 percent to 20 percent. The push for inversion comes from a minority of Walgreens’s shareholders. This is a minority accustomed to outsize power over shareholders and stakeholders alike: Goldman Sachs, three activist hedge funds, and the executive chairman of Alliance Boots, the Swiss firm that Walgreens must acquire to complete its inversion. The camp pushing to decamp offers tax evasion as a route to shareholder profit. This offer may sway the shareholder majority, but Walgreens’ stakeholders stand to lose big time.

More Than $20 Billion Annually In Government Subsidies For Oil

July 14, 2014 Shakuntala Makhijani, www.priceofoil.org Educate! Fossil Fuels, Oil, Subsidies, Taxes

Today, Oil Change International released a comprehensive report on fossil fuel exploration and production subsidies in the U.S. – Cashing in on All of the Above: U.S. Fossil Fuel Production Subsidies under Obama – which demonstrates that at a time when we need urgent action on climate change more than ever, the U.S. government is channeling huge and growing amounts of money to increasing discovery and production of oil, gas, and coal. These federal and state subsidies totaled $21.6 billion in 2013. Subsidies that promote fossil fuel exploration are particularly harmful and hypocritical. The world’s preeminent scientific institutions working on climate and energy have determined that the majority of the world’s existing fossil fuel reserves need to be left in the ground in order to avoid catastrophic climate impacts. In 2012, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that “no more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the 2°C goal.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reached a similar conclusion in its 2013 climate assessment.

The Limits Of Corporate Citizenship

July 9, 2014 Robert B. Reich, www.robertreich.org Educate! America, Capitalism, Corporatism, Taxes

Dozens of big U.S. corporations are considering leaving the United States in order to reduce their tax bills. But they’ll be leaving the country only on paper. They’ll still do as much business in the U.S. as they were doing before. The only difference is they’ll no longer be “American,” and won’t have to pay U.S. taxes on the profits they make. Okay. But if they’re no longer American citizens, they should no longer be able to spend a penny influencing American politics. Some background: We’ve been hearing for years from CEOs that American corporations are suffering under a larger tax burden than their foreign competitors. This is mostly rubbish. It’s true that the official corporate tax rate of 39.1 percent, including state and local taxes, is the highest among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But the effective rate – what corporations actually pay after all deductions, tax credits, and other maneuvers – is far lower.

As Good As It Gets? Hard Lessons From NYC Contracts

June 27, 2014 Mark Brenner, www.labornotes.org Educate! Inequality, Labor, New York City (NYC), Taxes, Unions

New York City teachers and transit workers just ratified contracts that will define what’s possible for the 250,000 city workers still in negotiations. The deals show how little juice is left for public sector unions trying to deliver using traditional tools at the bargaining table or in the political arena. If these are the limits in a union stronghold like New York—where one in four workers is a union member and 70 percent of the public sector is organized—the news isn’t good for conventional strategies elsewhere. What can be done better? To avoid a collision course with taxpayers, public sector unions need to upend the bipartisan consensus and put raising taxes back on the table. To achieve that, they’ll have to make an aggressive case to voters that strong public services, and the workers who provide them, are worth it—and that corporations and the super-rich should pay the tab. They’ll also have to challenge politicians, especially Democrats, who’ve made their peace with austerity.

The People Are With Us

May 4, 2014 Josh Sager, www.theprogressivecynic.com Educate! Abortion Rights, Climate Change, Democracy, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Immigration, Inequality, LGBTQ, Marijuana, Medicare, Minimum Wage, Single payer health care, Social Security, Taxes, Wars and Militarism, Women's Rights, Worker Rights and Jobs

It is a persistent belief among many in the political and media establishments that the United States is a “center-right nation” which finds progressives to be far too liberal for mainstream positions of power. If you look purely at electoral outcomes, those who assert this appear to have a fairly strong point. The last several decades of federal politics have been dominated by center-right policies and truly left wing politicians have been largely marginalized (ex. Bernie Sanders). Even Clinton and Obama—the last two Democratic presidents who, theoretically, should be leftists—are corporate-friendly moderates who have triangulated during negotiations with Republicans to pass center-right policy compromises (ex. Obama’s Heritage Foundation inspired ACAor the Clinton Defense of Marriage Act compromise). While electoral results support the idea of a center-right USA, looking beyond electoral politics—which involve a mixture of policy choices, party politics, fundraising, and propaganda—and focusing purely upon raw policy preferences, leaves us with an entirely different picture -- the people are progressive and leaning left on almost all critical issues.

Offshore Tax Havens Cost Average Taxpayer $1,259 A Year

April 17, 2014 Dan Smith, www.uspirg.org Educate! Corporatism, Taxes

As hardworking Americans file their taxes today, it’s a good time to be reminded that ordinary taxpayers pick up the tab for special interest loopholes in our tax laws. A new U.S. PIRG report released today revealed that the average American taxpayer in 2013 would have to shoulder an extra $1,259 in state and federal taxes to make up for the revenue lost due to the use of offshore tax havens by corporations and wealthy individuals. “Average taxpayers and small business owners foot the bill for offshore tax dodging. Every dollar in taxes companies avoid by booking profits to shell companies in tax havens must be balanced by cuts to public programs, higher taxes for the rest of us, or more debt,” said Dan Smith, Tax and Budget Advocate for U.S. PIRG and report co-author. Every year, corporations and wealthy individuals avoid paying an estimated $184 billion in state and federal income taxes by using complicated accounting tricks to shift their profits to offshore tax havens. Of that $184 billion, $110 billion is avoided specifically by corporations.

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