Ever wonder how Corporate America can make money when we Consumers are spending less because most of us have less income? It’s called “tax loopholes”, or “backdoor subsidies”, or “corporate welfare”!
Citizens for Tax Justice, and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, just updated their recent study on how too big to fail Corporate America is making money off the U.S. tax system.
The study, first published in November 2011, showed that so called Corporate America was actually getting paid by the U.S. tax system due to loopholes.
From 2008 through 2010, 30 of the top U.S. corporations actually had negative tax rates, even though the same 30 companies had total pre-tax profits in the hundreds of billions of dollars! All together they had a -7.1% tax rate, but Pepsi led the pack with a -57.6% tax rate, and General Electric took second with -45.3%!
For 2011 the number of corporations with negative tax rates dropped to 26. Pepsi and GE still led the pack with negative tax rates.
Basically what Corporate America is getting is a type of backdoor government subsidy, something right wing neo-conservative Capitalists have always said shouldn’t be done in a true capitalist system.
The study showed that from 2008 through 2011 the 30 companies have received more than $78 billion in total tax subsidies!
Here’s a list of some of the big subsidy recipients: “Wells Fargo alone garnered $21.6 billion in tax subsidies over the four years, followed by General Electric ($10.6 billion), Verizon ($7.7 billion), and Boeing ($6.0 billion).”–Big No-Tax Corps Just Keep on Dodging
Now realize that all this free tax money to Corporate America has not resulted in the creation of the millions of new jobs that are needed to create an economic recovery!
Wake up people!!! “Accordingly, they [elitist individuals & corporations] ink multi-billion dollar agreements and loot the energy, oil, wealth and existence of the nations, whereas they are the major cause of insecurity themselves!”-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran, April 10, 2012