Posted on 12/12/2012 3:52:07 PM PST by Starman417
No, not Mitt Romney.
Google has paid nearly nothing in taxes over the last few years:
Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.Google’s income shifting -- involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” -- helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries.
Google has sheltered about $10 billion offshore- in Bermuda:
Google Inc. (GOOG) avoided about $2 billion in worldwide income taxes in 2011 by shifting $9.8 billion in revenues into a Bermuda shell company, almost double the total from three years before, filings show.By legally funneling profits from overseas subsidiaries into Bermuda, which doesn’t have a corporate income tax, Google cut its overall tax rate almost in half. The amount moved to Bermuda is equivalent to about 80 percent of Google’s total pretax profit in 2011.
The increase in Google’s revenues routed to Bermuda, disclosed in a Nov. 21 filing by a subsidiary in the Netherlands, could fuel the outrage spreading across Europe and in the U.S. over corporate tax dodging. Governments in France, the U.K., Italy and Australia are probing Google’s tax avoidance as they seek to boost revenue during economic doldrums.
Last week, the European Union’s executive body, the European Commission, advised member states to create blacklists of tax havens and adopt anti-abuse rules. Tax evasion and avoidance, which cost the EU 1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) a year, are “scandalous” and “an attack on the fundamental principle of fairness,” Algirdas Semeta, the EC’s commissioner for taxation, said at a press conference in Brussels.
So what does Obama do with someone like that? Well, he offers him a Cabinet position:
(excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
The head of Google, Mr. Schmidt, is no dummy. He knows that he helped get Obama elected but if the shit hits the economic fan, he doesn’t want to be blamed for it by being one of Obama’s cabinet buttboys.
As for Winotaur, the magazine madame, being nominated for an ambassadorship, it goes to show that Obama does pay back his supporters eventhough they are totally unqualified to wipe a dog’s ass.
The “swamp of corruption” is overflowing in DC and shows no sights of abating.
shoot, I just spent my last 700k. If I wouldn’t have lost it all in that Nigerian bank scam I could have been Treasure Secretary had I donated it to Obama. I wish I had a do over....
Schmidt won’t even make it to a confirmation vote - either he declines the offer or some Senator puts a hold on his nomination ...
I do not fault Google for taking advantage of all the provisions of the tax code. Indeed, no taxpayer is under any obligation to pay a penny more than he is required to.
Economically, we do great damage to ourselves by taxing corporations at all. It would be far more efficient to tax the profit when it is distributed to each shareholder proportionately. General Electric has hundreds of expensive people on staff to minimize its taxes. Both GE and our country would be better of if they had more people creating product ideas than shuffling tax forms.
Economist Franz Oppenheimer said that wealth can come from two main ways: either the “economic means” by which he meant free exchange, and by the “political means” by which he means cronyism, regulatory capture, currying favor, lobbying for subsidies, etc.
Our own tax code discourages corporations with income and expenses outside of the US to bring any profit back into the country. In one context, we are happy to borrow money from China to “create or save” jobs, yet we will not lower the tax rate on this offshored treasure trove so it comes back and is put to work here. But truth be told, politicians can claim credit for creating jobs by a deliberate program that can be pointed to, but allowing the private sector to create jobs is too diffuse and not so easy to claim credit for.
I fail to understand WHY people can’t get it through their heads that the ONLY obligations corporations have to “the people” is to their shareholders. To pay ANY MORE than the absolutely minimum legal amount to governments in taxes is a neglect of their fiduciary duty. Now, if the shareholders want to be charitable (or not), this is their business and their right.
Fine. Remove the government's protection of corporations via "personhood".
Exactly. The shareholders are free to give their own money away but the CEO of the company they own is not free to do the same with company money because it is not his.
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