Posted on 11/14/2012 11:34:43 AM PST by Olog-hai
Large multinationals, many of them based in the United States, are masters at avoiding taxes on profits made abroad. Apple, for example, paid just $100 million in taxes in 2010 on overseas profits of $13 billion. But Germany would like to put a stop to the practice, and is finding some influential support. …
The operations corporations launch to optimize their tax bill go by various names, including "Double Irish" and "Dutch Sandwich," but the principle is always the same. In a confusing network of parent companies and subsidiaries, foreign branches and holding companies, sales, earnings and costs are shifted back and forth so many times that the companies end up looking poor wherever tax rates are high. The remaining earnings are generated primarily in low-tax countries.
Years ago, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimated that 60 percent of all international trade happens within multi-national corporations. Following the letter of the law, they do business with themselves, taking advantage of tax laws in different countries to minimize their burdens. This has disastrous consequences for governments, whose financial clout is compromised by the corporations' fiscal tricks. Government budgets become tighter as a result and pressure on those companies and employees who are unable to circumvent taxation is increased. …
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
Google, the highly profitable company based in Mountain View, California, managed to reduced its tax burden in the United States to 21 percent, even though the nominal tax rate in California is actually 41 percent. …. . . and they don’t find 41 percent unconscionable, never mind not mentioning the federal tax burdens on top.
Run like hell.
Go to those other countries.
The faster the better for us here is the CSA (Communist States of America).
The sooner our government collapses the better off we will be.
The sooner we can reclaim the Constitution and our rights.
Hmm. Labour politicians. Social market economy.
Hmmm. Article is written from a pro-socialist perspective. Parliamentary hearing.
It is indeed. And Labour politicians are presently as pro-EU as the LibDems.
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