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...simply to ensure that payees get checks prior to filing their taxes and receiving their returns?
What would happen if the majority of payees who receive a rebate check have already filed and received their refund? Would their rebate be applied against their next year's (tax year 2008's) refund?
The discussions involve rebate checks, not refunds or reductions in taxes for individuals. Why, when corporations are to get tax reductions. I see arguments about who should get a rebate check, not about whether the stimulus should involve rebates or tax reductions.
This seems to me to be more 'politics of prestidigitation', as in, focus on my left hand while I rob you with my right. Let's have the taxed middle class argue with the untaxed portions, the under- and unemployed about who should get a check, while the rich laugh at us, all the way to their brokers and their bankers.
I submit there should be a very strict definition of what is an American corporation. An American corporation is one that pays taxes here and does not avoid them here. An American corporation is one that employs people here and does not seek to send high-value jobs elsewhere. That American corporation should be eligible for US Government contracts. Every other corporation is simply existing the multi-national world and should not expect any US tax dollars (would Halliburton and KBR please pick up the white courtesy phone!)
Everyone recognizes the extent to which corporate pandering has substantially altered our country. Why, then, do we allow such misdirected discussions? No more corporate tax reductions. No more corporate personhood.