Time to pony up — Uncut UK, USA

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

Make profit-makers pay taxes

NOTES FROM U.S. UNCUT AND UK UNCUT

If you have a dollar ($1) in your pocket, then you have more than ExxonMobil, General Electric, & Bank of America combined paid last year in taxes.

Big U.S. corporations dodge up to $100 billion in taxes every year. This amounts to $1 trillion every decade that does not invest in the future of the United States of America.

Because of overseas tax havens and other tax loopholes, U.S. corporations are making profits in America but are barely paying taxes in America.

There is a direct connection between corporate tax cheats and what is happening to real people’s lives. If we close those loopholes, we will not have to cut back on firefighters, library hours, student loans, and valuable public services.

STOP Corporate Tax Dodging

U.S. Uncut’s current corporate targets

(Targets = Corporate Tax Cheats) —

Bank of America (primary target)

Verizon

FedEx

Sources and notes

U.S. Uncut says —

U.S. Uncut is a new movement inspired by UK Uncut, the anti-austerity movement that has swept the UK. 


U.S. Uncut is a grassroots movement taking direct action against corporate tax cheats and unnecessary and unfair public service cuts across the United States.

Washington’s proposed budget for the coming year sends a clear message: The wrath of budget cuts will fall upon the shoulders of hard-working Americans. This is unacceptable.

The Obama administration seeks to trim $1.1 trillion from the budget in the next ten years by cutting or eliminating more than 200 federal programs — many of them dedicated to social services and education. This budget, for example, slashes half of funding subsidizing heating for low-income Americans. It limits expansion of the Pell grant program for students. It decreases by more than 12 percent the funding for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Even more brutal spending cuts are being pushed by the new majority in the U.S. House of Representatives: At a time when America is most in need, they have made clear their intent to raid funds for Social Security, Medicare, education; to kill health care reform; and to gut investments needed to fund infrastructure, climate change, job creation. These cuts will come on top of the very painful austerity measures individual U.S. states have taken since the recession began — cuts worth hundreds of billions.

Washington clearly has abandoned ordinary Americans and there is an alternative — 

Make corporate tax avoiders pay.

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. corporations pay no income taxes — even while enjoying record profits and taxpayer-funded bailouts, as the economy slowly recovers from a financial crisis.

Eighty-three (83) of the top 100 publicly traded corporations operating in the United States, according to the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, exploit corporate tax havens.

Since 2009, America’s most profitable companies such as ExxonMobil, General Electric, Bank of America and Citigroup all paid a grand total of ZERO ($0) in federal income taxes to Uncle Sam.

Tax havens alone account for up to $1 trillion in tax revenue lost every decade — money that could be invested in K-12 education, colleges, public health, job creation and hundreds of other worthy public programs.

If we pay our taxes, why don’t they? Should not corporations who profit here pay here?

It is time for ordinary Americans to fight back — demand an end to the corporate tax avoidance. Join U.S. Uncut and together let’s make corporate tax avoiders pay.

http://www.usuncut.org/targets and http://www.usuncut.org/about

UK Uncut says —

Under the banner of UK Uncut, people from around the country have transformed banks and tax-dodging stores into schools, leisure centers and libraries to show that it’s society that’s too big to fail, not our broken banking system.

It was the greed and recklessness of the banks that caused the economic crisis, yet the government is making ordinary people pay the price in the form of unprecedented cuts to public services.

There are alternatives to the cuts, for example, making the banks pay for a crisis they created and stopping tax dodging by corporations and the rich. Instead, the government has chosen to cut vital public services. http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]

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