They're Back!
The Corporate Lobbyists with the Corporate pleading:
"Please, Please, Please, let us skip out on paying our 'fair share' again ... We'll create the Jobs this time, you'll see ..."
Should companies get a tax holiday?
Supporters say giving companies a break on repatriating foreign profits would help the economy.
by Kim Peterson on Thu, Jun 16, 2011
Companies have as much as $1 trillion in profits stored abroad. They want to bring that money to the United States but don't want to pay taxes at current corporate rates, which max out at 35%. Some politicians are pushing for a tax holiday similar to one granted in 2004, which allowed corporations to bring back money at a 5.25% rate, The Hill reports.
And from former SEIU Union president Andy Stern (Video on CNBC):
We have a Trillion Dollars overseas, NOT in play in the United States ...
Oh Andy! Et tu? have jumped on the Corporate kool-aid supply-side wagon?
Here's another point of view, on Corporate Tax Holidays:
Tax holiday from reality
by Cheryl Cook -- June 25, 2011
theunion.com, Nevada City
Corporations and their lobbyists are pressuring Congress to reinstate Bush's tax holiday for corporations to bring home offshore profits at a lowered 5.25 percent tax rate.
Apple would like to shake $12 billion from their offshore tree. Microsoft's offshore accounts compute to around $29 billion, and ask Google if they want to retrieve their $17 billion out there in cyberspace.
Money is power, so it just might happen again as it did in 2005 when President Bush and Congress appeased corporations with a tax holiday at a one-year 5.25 percent tax rate.
Companies with huge assets offshore were offered the opportunity to return $312 billion back to the United States at a much lower tax rate and stimulate the job market.
However, the majority of the money that returned into this country, a whopping 92 percent, was returned back to stockholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Hiring and job creation remained flat.
Here's what a struggling Small Business owner thinks of the magic elixir, aka Corporate Tax Breaks Create Jobs:
Small Businesses Bash 'Tax Holiday' Plan For Corporate Titans
Zach Carter, Paul Blumenthal, huffingtonpost.com -- 06/22/11
Debra Ruh runs TecAccess, a small business that works with large companies and the federal government to help make their tech products accessible to people with disabilities.
[...]
"We need to hire people, but we don't have the cash or the credit to do it," Ruh says.
Although she runs about $2 million a year in total sales, Ruh's costs made the firm unable to keep employing 28 of her workers. Today, she's down to seven employees.
[...] Ruh is frustrated with the current debate over fixing the U.S. economy, which seems to be focused on tax perks for the wealthy and large corporations, while ignoring the plight of ordinary workers and small firms like her own. Any proposal that might have any small chance of creating jobs or stimulating the economy seems to require huge front-end profits for corporate titans.
Here's a Citizen Action group, affiliated with Small Business, that's trying to stop these Corporate Welfare programs -- despite how urgently their well-paid Corporate Lobbyists are begging for them:
No More Tax Holidays for Big Corps, Wealthy Taxpayers
Business for Shared Prosperity
[...] Big corporations are sitting on record piles of cash. About $1 trillion in tax cuts went to the richest one percent over the last decade. Wall Street has plowed its bailouts and tax cuts into speculating, enriching execs and shifting more jobs and profits offshore.
Income tax revenue as a share of GDP is at the lowest level since 1951. The corporate tax share of federal receipts is down from 32% in 1952 to 9% now.
More budget-busting tax cuts for big corporations and wealthy Americans won’t help Main Street small business, won’t hire, house or educate more people, won’t rebuild our failing infrastructure, and won't make us more competitive globally.
SIGN THE CORPORATE TAX REFORM STATEMENT
SIGN THE PETITION AGAINST TAX HAVEN ABUSE
SIGN PETITION AGAINST HIGH-END TAX CUTS
Business for Shared Prosperity
Here's what another Small Business owner thinks about even more Corporate Tax Holidays:
As a small business owner for more than 30 years, I have to be reality based. My company wouldn’t last a week if we kept repeating mistakes. The Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans were a big mistake. Contrary to myth, my tax rate doesn’t affect hiring. If I think I can do more business, I hire more workers. The costs of finding, hiring and paying new employees are business expenses. They’re deducted up front from our taxable income. If we give more tax cuts to the wealthy, we’ll see many more cutbacks in the public services and infrastructure that really strengthen our economy.
-- Lew Prince, Owner, Vintage Vinyl, St. Louis
Hmmm? Seems like Lew Prince, from St Louis, ALREADY gets a Tax Break -- IF he hires New Workers. That's Odd. Corporation probably get this Tax Break too?
Seems like Lew Prince, Small Business owner of 30-years, knows that a healthy Economy grows from the Demand side -- from the Bottom up; from average People feeling secure enough to start buying again.
-- NOT from nervous Corporate Titans being given even MORE Tax Breaks to plow into Tax-sheltered Investments, and their oh-so-many Gated-community Chalets across the globe.
Poor Babies!