For the millions of people hitting the road at this very hour, and in the hours to come, it's going to be a bumpy journey, crashing through potholes after pothole, rutted road after rutted road, and creaky bridge after creaky bridge--all thanks to the dismal shape of the country's infrastructure (which gets a D+ from the American Society of Civil Engineers). No doubt, drivers will curse a whole list of people--but a small wager that few give up a few choice words for a big culprit: corporate greed.
You may know this, courtesy of Citizens for Tax Justice:
Most federal funding for highways comes from the federal Highway Trust Fund, which will face a shortfall starting in August because Congress has not adjusted the 18.4 cent per-gallon gas tax and 24.4 cent per-gallon diesel tax, which are not indexed for inflation, since 1993. The fact that they have not been increased to keep up with the rising costs of construction or adjusted to account for reduced fuel consumption now means that these taxes no longer raise enough money to fund our infrastructure needs.
Of course, one way to deal with this is to raise the tax of gasoline (we still pay really low prices relative to the rest of the world). But, that ain't happening with the jokers running the show in Congress.
So, instead, CTJ points out:
If lawmakers cannot bring themselves to provide the most obvious solution, an increase in fuel taxes, a second best solution would be to raise revenue by closing corporate tax loopholes. It would be impossible for corporations to profit if the U.S. did not have the roads, bridges and other infrastructure that makes commerce possible, so it’s only reasonable that they pay some taxes to support the federal government and it’s reasonable for Congress to close loopholes allowing corporations to shirk that duty.
Two proposals introduced in Congress recently would raise $19.5 billion for the Highway Trust Fund by closing the loopholes that allow corporations to “invert.” In an inversion, an American corporation reincorporates itself abroad and claims to be a foreign company that is mostly not subject to U.S. taxes even if it is still managed from the U.S. and conducts most of its business in the U.S. There are many more corporate tax loopholes that must be closed, and much more Congress needs to do to provide adequate infrastructure funding. But it certainly makes sense to start by stopping the worst corporate citizens from avoiding taxes.
The existing tax rules prevent an American corporation from simply reincorporating itself in a tax haven and declaring itself “foreign.” But a loophole allows inversions to take place when an American corporation merges with a smaller foreign corporation, even if the management and most of the business of the newly merged company stays in the U.S. In theory, the profits that any corporation (even a “foreign” corporation) earns in the U.S. are taxable in the U.S., but inversions are often followed by earnings stripping, which makes U.S. profits appear to be earned offshore where they won’t be taxed.[emphasis added]
As I
wrote recently, Sen. Carl Levin has been trying to stop these "inversions."
Simple formula: holes in the road=corporate greed.