Daily Agitator

I recently wrote a post about companies that do not pay taxes at all or at a reduced rate….and post got me to thinking about just who pays the taxes that are the income of the country?

When we talk about taxes, the Right has this tag line that X% of Americans pay NO taxes at all…..for them sometimes this is a good thing and when needed it is a travesty that more people do not pay taxes….so far I have NOT seen this in any form but if we take their words for it…..then there is more……this from Paul Bechhuit of Buzz Flash.com……

— General Electric made $10.3 billion in 2009, but received a $1.1 billion tax rebate.

— Forbes said about Bank of America in 2010: “How did they not pay any taxes on $4.4 billion in income?”

— Oil giant Exxon made a $45 billion profit in 2009, but paid no taxes in the United States.

— Citigroup had 4 quarters of billion-dollar profits in 2010, but paid no taxes.

— Wells Fargo made $12 billion but purchased Wachovia Bank to claim a $19 billion tax credit.

— Hewlett Packard’s U.S. income tax rate was 4.3% in 2008 and 2.3% in 2009.

— Verizon’s 10.5% tax rate, according to Forbes, is due to its partnership with Vodafone, the primary target in UK Uncut’s protests against tax evaders.

— Chevron’s tax rate was 1% in 2008.

— Boeing, which just won a $30 billion contract to build 179 airborne tankers, got $124 million back from the taxpayers in 2010.

— Over the past 5 years Amazon made $3.5 billion and paid taxes at the rate of 4.3%.

— Carnival Cruise Lines paid 1% in taxes on its $11.5 billion profit over the past 5 years.

— Koch Industries is not publicly traded, but their many tax-free benefits have been documented by the New York Observer and the Institute for Public Accuracy.

— In 2008 CorporateWatch said Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp paid “astoundingly low taxes” because of tax havens.

— Google “cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years by shifting its money around foreign countries.

— Merck, the second-largest drugmaker in the U.S., last year brought more than $9 billion from abroad without paying any U.S. tax.

— Pfizer, the largest drugmaker in the U.S., erased $10 billion in taxes with an “accounting treatment.”

If the people pay little or NO taxes and corporations do the same thing….just who is paying taxes?  It has got to be the small businesses……if it is then there needs to be a change in the tax codes….small business get a lower rate and corporations pay their share with NO deductions or help from the government……now you know why the country is in monetary trouble….NO one is paying their taxes!

What percentage do you pay?

We know that idea will not fly!  Corporations have friends in high places…like YOUR representative!