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Friday, October 7th, 2016

Tax-avoiding US corporations have offshored more money than the GDP of France: report

Author:     Avi Asher-Schapiro
Source:     The International Business Times/The Raw Story
Publication Date:     05 Oct 2016 at 19:35 ET
 Link: Tax-avoiding US corporations have offshored more money than the GDP of France: report
Stephan:   The story that is right under corporate media's nose although for obvious reasons they won't cover it is that the American tax system is a prime manifestation of the vast government corruption that infects every aspect of our culture. It is a creature shaped to the service of rich special interests. Donald Trump is a terrible businessman, although a brilliant marketer. But what he is really good at is gaming the tax system. And he is hardly alone. This report presents one aspect of what I mean. It proves that when you have a corrupt government there is never a need to break the law because you can have the law written by your political vassals exactly as you want it.  

money in politicsCorporations are stashing more and more of their profits overseas, taking advantage of legal loopholes to avoid paying hundreds of billions in U.S. taxes, says a new report. The corporations involved include household names like Nike, Apple and Goldman Sachs.

The Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition (FACT Coalition) analyzed SEC filings from 367 Fortune 500 companies.  In 2009, U.S.-based multinationals held less than $1.25 trillion in overseas tax havens — and by 2015, that number climbed to $2.5 trillion. “To put that in context, it is an amount larger than the GDP of France,” said Clark Gascoigne, the deputy director of FACT, a coalition that includes Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund.

“Every year, corporations collectively report that they have tens of billion more in cash stashed offshore than they did the year before,” said Matthew Gardner of ITEP. “The hard fact is that the U.S. tax code incentivizes tax haven abuse.”

American tax laws allow corporations to stash profits overseas and indefinitely delay “repatriation.” While companies are technically required to disclose to the SEC how much they would have […]

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