President Obama over the weekend strongly took exception to the notion that the Bush tax cuts for the rich should be extended. The president was right to do so.
Corporate taxes are not too high – they are way too low. In fact the majority of big corporations operating in the U.S. pay no taxes at all. That’s right: zero.
According to a recent report by the Government Accounting Office requested by Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, “72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005.”
It gets worse: for at least two of the years between 1998 to 2005 more than one-half of foreign corporations and 42 percent of those from the U.S. paid not one red penny in taxes, despite the astronomical growth of the deficit – now $418 billion and escalating.
These guys are taking it all the way to the bank: of those who do pay taxes, some 33 percent, only 2 percent pay more than 11 percent in taxes.
However, you wouldn’t know any of this from the tea partiers and GOP spin masters who complain about government entitlements and give-aways to working-class poor, black, brown, Asian, and white people living in the U.S.
As New York Auburnpub.com recently commented, “If you want to cut entitlements, cut welfare for the wealthy. Make corporations pay their fair share of the taxes.”
None of the corporations were named in the GAO report. At a minimum it’s time for full public disclosure. The government must act in the public interest.
Moreover, with corporations only paying 15 percent on capital gains and working people paying 25 percent, the Bush tax cuts must not be extended, tea partiers and their corporate backers be damned!
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