Friday, August 11, 2017
Corporations
Complain Their Taxes So High, But New Study Busts That Myth
Minimum-wage workers can't afford to rent a one-bedroom
apartment, but the GOP thinks it's massive corporations that need an income
boost
According to the Center on Budget
and Policy Priorities, corporate profits are "near all-time highs."
Wages for most workers, meanwhile, have been stagnant for decades. (Photo:
Jason Hargrove/Flickr/cc)
Corporate
profits are up. Wages remain low. And, as always, the richest are angling for
ever-lower tax rates.
Only 0.1 percent of full-time workers earning
the minimum wage can afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment in any state in the
U.S., but judging by their tax agenda, the Republican Party and President
Donald Trump appear to feel it is massive corporations and billionaires—not
American workers—who need an income boost.
"Real
tax reform would close the deferral loophole and ensure that large
multinational corporations cannot continue to dodge the taxes they
owe."
—Economic Policy Institute
—Economic Policy Institute
Attempting
to justify his push to give massive tax breaks to
the wealthiest Americans and the largest corporations, Trump has repeatedly
argued that businesses are being strangled by high tax rates. The GOP's new
televised ad campaign blares the same message: American corporations pay the
"highest tax rates in the world," it states.
A new analysis by the Economic Policy
Institute (EPI) finds, however, that this "talking point" is
"misleading because what corporations actually pay (their effective rate)
is far lower" than the statutory rate of 35 percent.
By taking
advantage of various loopholes and tax avoidance strategies, EPI's Hunter
Blair notes, American corporations are able to pay
far less than what they owe, thus drastically reducing government revenue and
bolstering their bottom lines.
Their
efforts have been very effective: According to the Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities, corporate profits are "near all-time highs." Wages
for most workers, meanwhile, have been stagnant for decades.
(Image credit: Economic Policy Institute)
EPI goes
on to argue that any genuine overhaul of the tax system would focus not on
cutting corporate taxes, but on closing tax loopholes.
But Trump
has indicated that he plans to do the opposite, the organization notes:
Real tax
reform would close the deferral loophole and ensure that large multinational
corporations cannot continue to dodge the taxes they owe. Instead, the Trump
administration has reversed its position on commitments to
close the deferral loophole, and their most recent proposal followed
congressional Republicans’ plans to institute a territorial tax system, which would no longer
tax multinational corporations’ offshore profits at all. At its core, a
territorial tax system makes the deferral loophole permanent.
As Common
Dreams reported on Wednesday, Republicans and
their corporate benefactors have begun to aggressively promote their pivot to
tax reform following their failed attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Activist
groups have warned that in order to achieve their expressed goal of lowering
tax rates "as much as possible," Republicans will
take aim—as they already have—at key safety net programs that
primarily benefit low-income families.
Indivisible
has published a toolkit for those looking to
resist Republicans' proposed "giveaway to corporations."
This work
is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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