Corporate Taxes!!!!!!

[Amskeptic]

Turns out I was wrong.

In the 50's, corporate taxes contributed 30% of the revenue required to run the Federal Government.

I had claimed that it had dropped to 11% under George W Bush. Well I was wrong.
It dropped to 6.6%.

Companies like General Electric that pulled in 15 billion dollars last year, not only paid NO tax, they scored a 4 billion dollar REFUND, even as they shed 33% of their workforce in this country so they could exploit cheaper labor overseas.

I officially declare that tax-reducing corporate apologists are dupes.
The Economic Policy Institute has noted that 100% of all income gains from 2000-2007 under the reckless Bush Regime went to the top 10%.

In 2009 the top 5% held 63.5% of the nation's wealth while the bottom 80% of income earners hold just 12.8% of the wealth.

The growth of the Federal Government has actually held steady at 21-25% of the GDP over the past 50 years.

I need to hear from pj, turk, Hippiewannabee, Robert Bergland, and others who feel that we need to reduce taxes. I really do. I need to understand how this is good for the country.
Colin

[turk]

It's my understanding the U.S. has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. I think Japan's is higher. How did GE not pay any taxes? I dunno, but they are tight with Obama, that is pretty well known.

[pj]

No I believe GE has been screwing us for quite sometime. It was and is GE that cheerleaded for Mr Obama through its NBC network till the day they sold it. It is also GE that has bedded down with the government in its green energy drive, proving to me the only green GE is interested in, is our money.

Having said all this, Colin Mr. Immelt head of GE is one of Mr Obama's favorites in the CEO world having put him in charge of one of his advisory boards and being a frequent visitor to 1600 Penn. Ave. So to blame Mr. Bush for this lack of tax payments in 2011 is a bit of a stretch. It seems that each President has their favorites and what we are witnessing is just the new crop of favored ones slopping at the DC trough.

As I sit here and do my taxes for 2010, you know it's a damn shame when I pay more in federal taxes on my incredibly small almost minute business then they do. That's why I didn't buy into hope and change, all I did is hope for change, showing once again hope ain't a good strategy.

[turk]

Growth in the private sector means J-O-B-S. The private sector is the backbone of wealth. Ever been offered a job by a poor person? Cuba has all the benefits of free government health care and jobs but I'm willing to bet their standard of living and free health care is below par. I could be wrong. Lotsa Cubans in S. Florida. I wonder why? Florida has no individual income tax IIRC. I think we need to bring manufacturing back here from Asia and other places.

[Lanval]

I think we need to bring manufacturing back here from Asia and other places.

That would require a government intervention. The reason jobs go offshore is that the production costs are cheaper, resulting in sky-high profits for the company owners, and to a lesser extent the shareholders.

The continued concentration of wealth in the hands of the very wealthy creating a vast chasm between the haves and have nots is the outcome of unregulated enterprise. I won't bother you with statistics; you can look them up yourself. Let if suffice to say that by every measure, the top one percent of the wealthy hold a far vaster portion of the wealth now than they did 10, 20 even 30 years ago and longer.

I'm curious Turk ~ what's your level of education? Your responses here often suggest you have some difficulty in understanding complex interactions, and it's one of the real frustrations of those who understand history that the "tea party" types who shout the most about the Constitution don't recognize that the Constitutional founders would have excluded the typical tea party type; the average American is an uneducated boob by the standards of the Founding Fathers. That's why the excluded people like the tea party type 'average American joe' from voting: An inability to process difficult and competing values/claims in a way that promotes the highest good.

The rigid/dogmatic terms of most political discussion these days (particularly, but not solely from the Republican right wing and the Tea Party members) is fundamentally un-American. Washington, Jefferson and Hamilton disagreed vehemently in ideological terms, but were capable of the highest regard for one another. I note that the Federalists weren't in the habit of proclaiming their opposition unpatriotic (ala the modern Republicans) because to do so is anti-thetical to the stated goal of unification. If you want to unify, you must accept compromise and avoid demonizing; these are traits that require intelligent and considered discourse, and educated and nuanced perception of multiple viewpoints and the acceptance that the greater good is not a moral absolute, just a better outcome.

So perhaps you could reconsider your stance, or at least your statement which is nonsensical: "free market = good" + "bring back jobs from overseas"

Those two statements are ideologically, practically and politically opposites.


Lanval

[turk]

I think you need to follow your own advice. You insinuate you are better educated than I, then lecture me about nuance. patriotism, unity, dogma, blah,blah, blah, -none of which was brought up by me-, then tell me I need to reconsider my stance. What stance would that be sir? I suggest you hold off presumption and have a polite discussion about the reasons jobs could be brought back to this country rather than condescension. That will get you nothing, but a lot of cheering from your section. Man up and talk like you pretend to be.
Now, it's pretty widely accepted the surplus of indigent warm bodies overseas is a profitable workforce to exploit. The reasons it isn't as profitable to employ Americans are probably many, and more complicated than your quick run-through of the plot. I guess it's not cool to want to examine that closer than your dogmatic cliff-notes version. Where did you get that intelligent analysis? Okay, let's talk.

And be careful in quoting and interpreting. Try to read the actual words:

I think we need to bring manufacturing back here from Asia and other places.

[... blah, blah, blah, superior lecture given by Lanval -see it for yourself above ..]

So perhaps you could reconsider your stance, or at least your statement which is nonsensical: "free market = good" + "bring back jobs from overseas"

Those two statements are ideologically, practically and politically opposites.


Lanval

Wrong bud. You jumped the gun with your presumptuous "ideologically rigid" reading.

[ruckman101]

It's my understanding the U.S. has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. I think Japan's is higher. How did GE not pay any taxes? I dunno, but they are tight with Obama, that is pretty well known.

One of the highest corporate tax rates in the world is pointless if there are loopholes allowing corporations to pay nothing. 400, 500 percent, meaningless.


neal

[hippiewannabe]

*pssst...Colin....Bush is gone*

The Democrats took control of the House and Senate in 2006. In 2008 they won the Presidency, overwhelming control of the House, and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. It's fair to say they own 2010's tax law, about which you are clearly outraged.

I refer you to a few quotes from David Kocieniewski's article in the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/busin ... =cse&scp=2

The shelters are so crucial to G.E.’s bottom line that when Congress threatened to let the most lucrative one expire in 2008, the company came out in full force...
The head of its tax team, Mr. Samuels, met with Representative Charles B. Rangel, then chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which would decide the fate of the tax break. As he sat with the committee’s staff members outside Mr. Rangel’s office, Mr. Samuels dropped to his knee and pretended to beg for the provision to be extended — a flourish made in jest, he said through a spokeswoman.

That day, Mr. Rangel reversed his opposition to the tax break, according to other Democrats on the committee.

The following month, Mr. Rangel and Mr. Immelt stood together at St. Nicholas Park in Harlem as G.E. announced that its foundation had awarded $30 million to New York City schools, including $11 million to benefit various schools in Mr. Rangel’s district. Joel I. Klein, then the schools chancellor, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who presided, said it was the largest gift ever to the city’s schools.

In the mid-1980s, President Ronald Reagan overhauled the tax system after learning that G.E. — a company for which he had once worked as a commercial pitchman — was among dozens of corporations that had used accounting gamesmanship to avoid paying any taxes.

“I didn’t realize things had gotten that far out of line,” Mr. Reagan told the Treasury secretary, Donald T. Regan, according to Mr. Regan’s 1988 memoir. The president supported a change that closed loopholes and required G.E. to pay a far higher effective rate, up to 32.5 percent.

Here's the thing that really gets me:

Minimizing taxes is so important at G.E. that Mr. Samuels has placed tax strategists in decision-making positions in many major manufacturing facilities and businesses around the globe. Mr. Samuels, a graduate of Vanderbilt University and the University of Chicago Law School, declined to be interviewed for this article. Company officials acknowledged that the tax department had expanded since he joined the company in 1988, and said it now had 975 employees.

Nearly a thousand of our best and brightest, people that could be devoted to increasing competitiveness and creating wealth, are instead working to outsmart the taxman. Our tax dollars are probably funding a similar number of smart people at the IRS to chase down their schemes and argue with them. Not to mention the consultants and lawyers on the periphery. The fact is, corporations don't pay taxes, people do. All taxes and profits are passed on to customers (citizens/taxpayers), or shareholders (citizens/taxpayers).

While we have been attacking corporations, other countries have been lowering their corporate tax rates, thereby increasing investment, employment, and tax revenue. Making corporate tax rates zero, or at least a very low percentage with no loopholes, would raise revenue, increase competitiveness, and eliminate waste.

[chitwnvw]

...and others who feel that we need to reduce taxes. I really do. I need to understand how this is good for the country.
Colin

Well, I am paying 10% sales tax, 16 percent federal income tax, 3% state income tax, property tax another 6%, medicaid 1%, plus toll roads and tickets as part of the revenue stream...we are dialing up to 40% of every dollar I earn, and there aren't a whole lot of them, going back to the government. So yeah, I am running low on %s and I think it is time for less taxation.

[Lanval]

Ok, just work with this:

How can the private sector both create jobs AND be responsible for sending them overseas? How?

Lanval

[Lanval]

. Making corporate tax rates zero, or at least a very low percentage with no loopholes, would raise revenue, increase competitiveness, and eliminate waste.

Much of what you say is reasonable I think; I'm not sure that the tax rate is the real issue though. Companies leave one state to go to another for a lower tax rate, and they do the same thing at the national level. A good company seeks the lowest cost at the highest return.

There is a second problem, though; even if we lower the tax rate, we still have (anywhere in the 'first world') a very high labor cost. So even if we lower the tax rate (resulting in larger corporate profits) they companies will still seek a move away from high cost labor. It's built into the public corporate structure; companies are forced to increase their profitability year over year, in order to maintain their value. This means that once they've achieved a profit through lower taxes, they will eventually need another form of profit. If the market is mostly mature, then lower labor costs is one obvious answer.

I personally don't see any easy out; simply lowering the tax rates isn't going to create wholesale growth in the American marketplace ~ there are simply too many moving parts for it to work that way.

L.

[turk]

Ok, just work with this:

How can the private sector both create jobs AND be responsible for sending them overseas? How?

Lanval

That doesn't make sense. You're insinuating something and setting up a straw man. Why don't you come down and talk like a person instead of projecting what you believe others think and asking stupid questions.

[Amskeptic]

Ok, just work with this:

How can the private sector both create jobs AND be responsible for sending them overseas? How?

Lanval

That doesn't make sense. You're insinuating something and setting up a straw man. Why don't you come down and talk like a person instead of projecting what you believe others think and asking stupid questions.

Turk, I have been following this conversation and I guarantee you it is crystal clear to the observer that you reacted with instant raised hackles to an "elitist" answer in Lanval's contribution. But it really was a very satisfying answer that did not limit the course of the conversation. His last question quoted here is a very neutral question that deserves a neutral answer. Instead you go off claiming that he is insinuating and setting up straw men and is participating from on high and claiming that it is a stupid question. Knock it off turk. I want a respectful dialogue.

To answer his question, I will re-phrase it. The facts clearly show beyond a shadow of doubt that the rationale for lowering taxes under Bush was to generate jobs. That was the rationale. The results were that we lost jobs to out-sourcing. How are we to accept the latest demands to reduce taxes still further to create jobs, when the fact of the matter is that the two are not necessarily related, in fact, we need tax pressure to help corporations decide to keep jobs here.
Just answer the "stupid question".

Chitwnvw does a fine job of showing the painfully regressive tax burden that now exists on us bottom 80% with only 12% of the nation's wealth. Turk, Hippiewannabee, why should we not demand greater contribution from the top 10% that has hoarded 63% of the nation's wealth? Why not? We used to, when corporations contributed 30% instead of today's 6.6%.

Use the above numbers in your replies. Really. This is the crux of the problem.
Colin

[Amskeptic]

*pssst...Colin....Bush is gone*

I agree. If you read me for content, I have been exceptionally pissed with Obama recently. But I am fair. I am not a knee-jerk partisan. I see the financial industry distorting the hell out of our Representative Democracy with cash lobbying, I see the Supreme Court giving its blessing to Cash=Speech, and I am pissed!

Make a note: Colin is pissed with Obama/Summers/Geitner/Immelt?? blown opportunities.

That does not change the fact that the capitalist cabal has been ramping up long before Obama. It does not change the fact that Obama met a wall of opposition from Republicans and spineless lackey donkey beholden democrat corporate lapdogs. Obama let us down with his refusal to lead on principles. Make a note of that. "Bush is gone," you tell me, but adults everywhere I think can remind you that his legacy is sticking around.

Back to the focus of this discussion. Hippiewannabee, answer me this, is it fair that the top 10% holds 63% of our nation's wealth? Is it fair that our "high corporate tax rate" is no burden at all when the truth is that they are paying LESS THAN EVER. Answer this directly.
Colin

[Amskeptic]

While we have been attacking corporations, other countries have been lowering their corporate tax rates, thereby increasing investment, employment, and tax revenue. Making corporate tax rates zero, or at least a very low percentage with no loopholes, would raise revenue, increase competitiveness, and eliminate waste.

This is dreamy. "Attacking" corporations? Are you serious?

No player in the great economic disaster of 2008 has been puinished. Not one sub-prime mortgage rip-off company like Countrywide has been punished. They neatly declare bankruptcy and are absolved of all liability whike their officers get to keep the loot! What a racket! Not one member of Goldman Sachs has gone to prison. Not a single solitary investment banker has been asked to give back his ill-gotten gains. Not one damn bonus was taken away while millions have had their homes taken away. Not a single military contractor GE to Halliburton has been punished with a single criminal complaint as people have died under their immoral illegal behavior. They can duck out with a little fine and a "without admitting to a crime" caveat.
While we have been attacking corporations? Give me a break. We dumb American workers are their bitches. Ask them to leave if they don't like paying American taxes. Watch how many do.
Colin