We've found, in researching our documentary on abusive of offshore tax havens, that it is very difficult to find out what corporations are actually paying because tax returns are secret and the corporations use that secrecy to hide their tax-avoiding schemes. This secrecy law began in the Nixon administration and has gotten more and more secretive in favor of the corporations over the years.
There are several great attorneys, accountants and economists doing the work to delve into the annual shareholder's reports and other documents to try and figure out what was actually paid. In Annual reports, companies report what they pay in tax based on what they've paid around the world as a percentage of their profits. They call this the "effective tax rate"
But in these annual reports, they never reveal what they pay to the American government. For instance, Pfizer reports it pays something like 15% in tax, but they also report that none of their profits are in the United States. So that 15% tax was paid to other countries and other governments and zero was paid to the United States. GE, with an amazing cadre of tax attorneys which the IRS is completely impotent to go up against, was able to show that they owed a (-15%)- a negative effective tax rate. Nothing paid anywhere.
Here are the names of some amazing people doing the work and also would be great to contact about the movement.
• Jesse Drucker- Bloomberg news, broke the Google pays 2.4 % "effective tax" Again, this doesn't even mean they paid the U.S. anything.
• Marty Sullivan-Economist writes for Tax Analysts, uncovers all kinds of corporate tax data including all the Pharma companies moving profits offshore.
• David Cay Johnston, formerly with the NYT, won a Pulitzer, best selling author who now contributes to Tax Analysts.
• Rebecca Wilkins- Citizens for Tax Justice, these people plow through endless Government Accounting Office reports and shareholders' reports to compile data including how all of the Defense Contractors that take tax dollars cheat the government by not paying tax.
• Bob Goulder-Editor and Chief of Tax Analysts, covers all aspects of bad tax policy.
I'm happy to share contact information to any of the people out there doing PR
You guys are seriously kicking ass. And the best part is, this is such an all-encompassing movement. It effects everyone except the multimillionaire CEOs who are perpetrating the abuse and the politicians that they own : )
Vicky Bruce
Producer/Director
Onshore Productions
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