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Let’s play, “Scamming the System!” It’s the exciting and richly rewarding game that allows every American to use offshore income shelters and a labyrinth of loopholes to dodge their tax responsibilities. To get in the game, all you need is a few dozen tax lawyers, a flock of lobbyists, and an office in the Cayman Islands.
What? You don’t have any of those things? Well now – that’s your fault, isn’t it?
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But them that’s got – including Boeing, eBay, GE, Verizon, and at least a couple of dozen other brand-name players – are in the game big time. A new report by the Institute for Policy Studies reveals that these multibillion-dollar giants pay far more to their CEOs than they pay in taxes to help fund our nation’s crucial needs.
In fact, IPS reports that these top executives got their fat paychecks precisely because they were so focused on tax dodging. The corporations analyzed in the report averaged $1.9 billion in profits last year, yet paid zero in federal income taxes – instead, manipulating the system to get an average of $400 million each in refunds from the IRS! For being such skilled scammers, the chieftains of these corporations raked in an average of $16 million in personal pay last year – way above the average pay for CEOs of other big businesses.
Meanwhile, corporations are lobbying Washington to be given a tax cut. They wail that the U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent is higher than any other industrial nation except Japan and that this “burden” is hobbling their global competitiveness. B.S. – as the IPS exposé documents, these scammers aren’t paying anywhere near 35 percent – if anything.
Wow, these greedheads really put the “sin” in cynical. To help stop them from gaming us, check out the Institute’s reform recommendations: www.ips-dc.org