Highlighted in Bernie Sanders' specific issues is this:
Demanding that the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share in taxes. As president, Sen. Sanders will stop corporations from shifting their profits and jobs overseas to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. He will create a progressive estate tax on the top 0.3 percent of Americans who inherit more than $3.5 million. He will also enact a tax on Wall Street speculators who caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs, homes, and life savings.
He knows where the money is hiding. And a comprehensive report just out today details the scam--one that Bernie will take down.
Entitled "Offshore Shell Games", the report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund (U.S. PIRG Education Fund) and Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) tells us:
U.S.-based multinational corporations are allowed to play by a different set of rules than small and domestic businesses or individuals when it comes to the tax code. Rather than paying their fair share, many multinational corporations use accounting tricks to pretend for tax purposes that a substantial portion of their profits are generated in off-shore tax havens, countries with minimal or no taxes where a company’s presence may be as little as a mailbox. Multinational corporations’ use of tax havens allows them to avoid an estimated $90 billion in federal income taxes each year.
Congress, by failing to take action to end to this tax avoidance, forces ordinary Americans
to make up the difference. Every dollar in taxes that corporations avoid by using tax havens must be balanced by higher taxes on individuals, cuts to public investments and public services, or increased federal debt.[emphasis added]
And:
Most of America’s largest corporations maintain subsidiaries in offshore tax havens. At least 358 companies, nearly 72 percent of the Fortune 500, operate subsidiaries in tax haven jurisdictions as of the end of 2014.[emphasis in original]
• All told, these 358 companies maintain at least 7,622 tax haven subsidiaries.
• The 30 companies with the most money officially booked offshore for tax purposes
collectively operate 1,225 tax haven subsidiaries.
Approximately 60 percent of companies with tax haven subsidiaries have set up at
least one in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands — two particularly notorious tax havens.
Furthermore, the profits that all American multinationals — not just Fortune 500 companies — collectively claimed they earned in these two island nations in 2010 totaled 1,643 percent and 1,600 percent of each country’s entire yearly economic output, respectively.
Fortune 500 companies are holding more than $2.1 trillion in accumulated profits offshore for tax purposes. Just 30 Fortune 500 companies account for 65 percent of these offshore profits. These 30 companies with the most money offshore have booked $1.4 trillion overseas for tax purposes.
Example?
Apple: Apple has booked $181.1 billion offshore — more than any other company. It would owe $59.2 billion in U.S. taxes if these profits were not officially held off-shore for tax purposes. A 2013 Senate investigation found that Apple has structured two Irish subsidiaries to be tax residents of neither the United States, where they are managed and controlled, nor Ireland, where they are incorporated. This arrangement ensures that they pay no tax to any government on the lion’s share of their offshore profits.
And:
Some companies that report a significant amount of money offshore maintain hundreds of subsidiaries in tax havens, including the following:
• PepsiCo maintains 132 subsidiaries in off shore tax havens. The soft drink maker reports holding $37.8 billion offshore for tax purposes, though it does not disclose what
its estimated tax bill would be if it didn’t book those profits offshore.
Important point follows:
Corporations that disclose fewer tax haven subsidiaries do not necessarily dodge taxes less. [emphasis added] Many companies have disclosed fewer tax haven subsidiaries in recent years, all while increasing the amount of cash they keep offshore. Some companies may simply be failing to disclose substantial numbers of tax haven subsidiaries. Others may be booking larger amounts of income to fewer tax haven subsidiaries.
Consider:
• Citigroup reported operating 427 tax haven subsidiaries in 2008 but disclosed only
41 in 2014. Over that time period, Citigroup nearly doubled the amount of cash it reported holding offshore. The company currently pays only an 8.5 percent tax rate offshore, implying that most of those profits have been booked to low- or no-tax jurisdictions.
• Walmart reported operating zero tax haven subsidiaries in 2014 and for the past decade. Despite this, a recent report released by Americans for Tax Fairness revealed
that the company operates as many as 75 tax haven subsidiaries (using this report’s
list of tax haven countries) that were not included in its SEC filings. Over the past
decade, Walmart’s offshore income has grown from $6.8 billion in 2005 to $23.3
billion in 2014.
• Bank of America reported operating 264 tax haven subsidiaries in 2013 but disclosed
only 22 in 2014. At the same time, Bank of America’s offshore holdings have increased
modestly from $17 billion to $17.2 billion.
• Google reported operating 25 subsidiaries in tax havens in 2009, but since 2010
only discloses two, both in Ireland. During that period, it increased the amount of cash it reported offshore from $7.7 billion to $47.4 billion. An academic analysis found that as of 2012, the 23 no-longer-disclosed tax haven subsidiaries were still operating.
• Microsoft, which reported operating 10 subsidiaries in tax havens in 2007, disclosed
only five in 2014. During this same time period, the amount of money that Microsoft reported holding offshore jumped by a factor of 14. Microsoft has paid a tax rate of only 3 percent to foreign governments on those profits, suggesting that most of the cash is booked in tax havens.
This is a massive scam, enabled by both parties over many years. It deprives us of money needed for a whole set of national priorities.
The only person who will deal with this is Bernie Sanders--because he's been on top of the issue for many years...it is not a campaign-era conversion policy.
This is not a new issue to take on for Bernie. His Senate website, for example, details "America’s Top 10 Corporate Tax Avoiders" with an emphasis on stashing money in tax havens abroad.
End the scam.
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BUY THE ESSENTIAL BERNIE SANDERS AND HIS VISION FOR AMERICA