If you think Apple's legal-ish tax avoidance is maddening (they paid less than 2% tax on billions of dollars squirreled away in an Irish corporate no-man's-land), just wait until you hear about Facebook's negative 40.4% tax rate. Sure, Apple's getting all the attention, but there are plenty of corporations that are pushing the loopholes even farther. After digging a little deeper into the issue, I wondered what would happen if a human being took advantage of some of the favorable tax laws and loopholes just like a corporation. Corporations are human, but can humans be a corporation?
Be sure to comment and share-- and tell me what you would do if you had all the rights and privileges of a real live corporation!
[Poem Narrator]
There once was a lad, lived right down the block,
Who loved the tech giants, no matter the stock.
The other ones, too, they gave him a glow,
'Long as they kept, their tax rates quite low.
He loved them so much, and admired their pluck,
An idea then hit him, an idea that stuck!
"I'll do my taxes like them, my big corporate heroes,
If I do the same thing, we'll all have zeroes!"
So he sent his pay-check to a magical isle,
Then he changed his address in a similar style.
His new car he wrote off as a terrible heap,
And did his dishes in China, for incredibly cheap!
He paid himself stock, and was really in luck,
'Cause he wrote it all off, just like that guy Zuck.
Much better than zero, he was negative now!
Which meant money came back, amazing, and how!
Feeling so chipper, he drilled for some oil,
Which brought more money back, for just poking the soil.
He was rich now, beyond his wildest dreams,
With a tax rate lower, than had ever been seen.
He found loopholes a-plenty, like a great corporation.
All that other stuff wrong, he had no obligation . . .
. . . to help with the things that fell all around,
As long as the ether, kept his cash sound.
Then one day it happened, they hauled him away,
And locked him up tight, for a very long stay.
Corporations are people, not vice-versa you see,
It's the people pay taxes, while corporations . . . go free.