You know all those Republican claims about how their tax giveaway to big corporations would create jobs? Ars Technica highlights a couple stories that show just how false those claims were. At AT&T:
AT&T thus announced in November that it would invest "an additional $1 billion" if Congress passed a tax reform bill—but the telco never said what the exact level of investment would have been if the tax bill wasn't passed.
Similarly, when AT&T wanted the Federal Communications Commission to repeal its Title II net neutrality rules, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said that Title II regulation is "suppressive to investment."
AT&T got both the tax cut and the net neutrality repeal but then started laying employees off. AT&T's explanation of the layoffs demonstrates that the company's hiring practices are based on specific needs and changes in technology and are not direct responses to government actions.
"Despite its claim that a corporate tax cut would create thousands of middle-class jobs in its industry, AT&T recently announced that hundreds of workers in the Southwest would be declared 'surplus' and subject to layoff," CWA said in an announcement of its lawsuit.
At Comcast:
Comcast reportedly fired about 500 salespeople shortly before Christmas, despite claiming that the company would create thousands of new jobs in exchange for a big tax cut.
Comcast apparently tried to keep the firings secret while it lobbied for the tax cut that was eventually passed into law by the Republican-controlled Congress and signed by President Trump in late December.
Add that to the fact that a few highly publicized raises or bonuses that businesses went along with Trump in claiming as results of the tax scam were actually a result of union action or had been in the works previously, and you can see why “tax scam” is the right description.
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