Claim dollars in corp. tax havens, Fund USA

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

Point to “artful tax dodgers” the next time a politician claims “‘there is no money’” — for children’s health care, K-12 education, teachers, firefighters, police officers, medical first-responders’ jobs — and “‘we have to make cuts.’”

Corporations are heavy users of U.S. taxpayer-funded public infrastructure and property rights protection systems. They use our regulated marketplace. Call upon our law enforcement system and judiciary to remedy disputes. U.S. police forces and firefighters protect corporations.  Corporations enjoy all the privileges and benefits of tax-paying citizens but many corporations do not pay their fair share for the privileges and benefits they enjoy.

In his late February article “Pay Up, Corporate Tax Dodgers,” Chuck Collins names names, elaborates on the lies, and calls to action.  Some of the corporate cheats Collins names are these.

Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup — … banks that trashed the economy, took our tax dollars to stay alive after the economic meltdown.

 Goldman Sachs — recipient of $10 billion taxpayer bailout “gamed its effective tax rate down to one percent [what] its shakedown-artist executives call ‘changes in geographic earnings mix.’”  

FedEx — delivering on taxpayer-funded roads 

ExxonMobil — [should] call “the fire department on the Cayman Islands the next time its gas station erupts in flames”  

Pfizer — its “little blue pills’” sales, market share, bottom line “protected by U. S. taxpayer-funded system of patents and intellectual property rights” 

 Boeing — recipient of “contracts for taxpayer-funded military jets”

 General Electric • Mattel • Dow Chemical • Hewlett-Packard • Cisco

… These corporations and more under pay or escape paying U.S. taxes.  They must pay up. If they are paying some, they must start paying their “fair share,” Collins expresses this for all of us; but he goes a step further in urging us to wise up and speak out. Press the issue. Unless we force Congress to stop tax haven abuse, Collins says, we are chumps.

“In a democracy, if we sit back and just grumble, we get what we deserve. We’re chumps until we wake up and force members of Congress to stop tax haven abuse.”

Sources and notes

According to Merriam Webster, a “chump” is a fool, a dupe, a sucker. 

“Pay Up, Corporate Tax Dodgers” (Chuck Collins), February 28, 2011, http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/pay_up_corporate_tax_dodgers#

Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and directs IPS’s Program on Inequality and the Common Good. Among his books is Economic Apartheid in America: A Primer on Economic Inequality and Insecurity, co-authored with Felice Yeskel, http://www.ips-dc.org/staff/chuck

On CounterSpin last week: “Chuck Collins on U.S. Uncut, Laura Flanders on Wisconsin” — Program lead: “As politicians of both parties and pundits of various ideological stripes discuss what services and rights need to be cut and stripped from working people, the subject of raising taxes seems almost taboo in corporate media discussions. Not so here. [CounterSpin talks] about raising taxes with Chuck Collins, a senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, and the co-founder of U.S. Uncut, a network working to stop corporate tax dodging, CounterSpin  March 4-10, 2011, http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4256

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