http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/domestic-taxes/153947-geithner-administration-crafting-corporate-tax-reform-proposal#thecomments-form-message

Geithner confirms administration is crafting plan for corporate tax reform

By Bernie Becker - 04/05/11 12:44 PM ET

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told lawmakers Tuesday that the administration is crafting a corporate tax reform plan that would eliminate some tax preferences in exchange for a lower corporate tax rate.

Geithner had previously said that he wants the administration and Congress to work together on overhauling the corporate tax code, but this appeared to be the first time he has mentioned an administration reform proposal.  

The secretary did not go into much detail about the plan or when it would be released. But he did say he thought the proposal would help get the process moving in Congress and that the administration had been consulting with lawmakers on the tax-writing committees. 

“I’m actually quite optimistic that we’re going to be able to start that process with a very strong pro-investment, pro-growth, pro-competitiveness proposal,” Geithner said, adding that the plan would be revenue-neutral.

Geithner’s statements come amid a flurry of action on the tax-reform front, which prominent policymakers on both sides have said should be examined.

The House GOP budget plan — crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the chairman of the House Budget Committee — proposes reducing both the top corporate and individual tax rates to 25 percent. Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, also floated those figures in mid-March.

On Monday, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Dan Coats (R-Ind.) introduced bipartisan legislation to comprehensively revamp the tax code. 

Geithner, testifying before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, suggested Tuesday that he thought the corporate tax code could be revamped before the individual one, a different approach from House Republicans and the Wyden-Coats bill. 

The secretary also reiterated that the administration would be unwilling to examine a policy allowing multinationals to bring offshore profits into the United States at a reduced tax rate outside of broader corporate reform. Some lawmakers and a coalition of businesses have called for such a tax holiday in advance of tax reform. 

“What we want to do is improve incentives for people investing more of those resources here in the United States,” Geithner said. 

For their part, Camp and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, both praised the Ryan budget proposal for calling for major tax reform, which they said would help boost job creation. 

“We must focus on getting Washington out of the way so employers can do what they do best — innovate and create jobs — and that starts with comprehensive tax reform,” Camp said in a statement.

“We know our tax code is too complex, threatens our ability to compete in the world, and needs to be overhauled,” Hatch said in his own statement.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told lawmakers Tuesday that the administration is crafting a corporate tax reform plan that would eliminate some tax preferences in exchange for a lower corporate tax rate.

Geithner had previously said that he wants the administration and Congress to work together on overhauling the corporate tax code, but this appeared to be the first time he has mentioned an administration reform proposal.  

The secretary did not go into much detail about the plan or when it would be released. But he did say he thought the proposal would help get the process moving in Congress and that the administration had been consulting with lawmakers on the tax-writing committees. 

“I’m actually quite optimistic that we’re going to be able to start that process with a very strong pro-investment, pro-growth, pro-competitiveness proposal,” Geithner said, adding that the plan would be revenue-neutral.

Geithner’s statements come amid a flurry of action on the tax-reform front, which prominent policymakers on both sides have said should be examined.

The House GOP budget plan — crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the chairman of the House Budget Committee — proposes reducing both the top corporate and individual tax rates to 25 percent. Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, also floated those figures in mid-March.

On Monday, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Dan Coats (R-Ind.) introduced bipartisan legislation to comprehensively revamp the tax code. 

Geithner, testifying before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, suggested Tuesday that he thought the corporate tax code could be revamped before the individual one, a different approach from House Republicans and the Wyden-Coats bill. 

The secretary also reiterated that the administration would be unwilling to examine a policy allowing multinationals to bring offshore profits into the United States at a reduced tax rate outside of broader corporate reform. Some lawmakers and a coalition of businesses have called for such a tax holiday in advance of tax reform. 

“What we want to do is improve incentives for people investing more of those resources here in the United States,” Geithner said. 

For their part, Camp and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, both praised the Ryan budget proposal for calling for major tax reform, which they said would help boost job creation. 

“We must focus on getting Washington out of the way so employers can do what they do best — innovate and create jobs — and that starts with comprehensive tax reform,” Camp said in a statement.

“We know our tax code is too complex, threatens our ability to compete in the world, and needs to be overhauled,” Hatch said in his own statement.

Top 10 US Corporate Tax Avoiders Named on Senate Floor

posted by: Nancy Roberts 1 day ago

163 comments

Despite complaints about the U.S.'s burdensome 35% corporate tax rate, two-thirds of American corporations pay no taxes in a given year. In a speech last week on the Senate floor, Senator Bernie Sanders  (I) of Vermont called out the top 10 corporate tax avoiders:

Among those actually getting money back from the Feds:

• ExxonMobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009, paid no federal income taxes, received a $156 million rebate

• Bank of America received a $1.9 billion IRS refund despite $4.4 billion of profits

• General Electric had $26 billion in profits, and $4.1 billion refund (GE made it onto another top 10 list of top corporate lobbyists in 2010, spending $39 million)

• Chevron nabbed a $19 million refund after making $10 billion in profits

Wall Street made the list as well; the Senator's office notes,"Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department."

Spreading the Burden, if not the Wealth

Given the nation's $1.6 trillion deficit, Senator Sanders suggests that the burden of deficit reduction be shared more equally, rather than hurting working people, sick children, and others ill-equipped for optimal lobbying.

Senator Sanders has called for eliminating corporate tax loopholes and getting rid of tax breaks for oil and gas companies. He has introduced a bill that would raise an estimated $50 billion through an "emergency" 5.4 percent extra tax on people with adjusted gross incomes of over one million dollars.

Sharing the pain...not happening

Senator Sanders says that serious times call for shared sacrifice. Those are beautiful words, but sharing sacrifice seems like a fairy tale in a country where the top five percent own nearly two-thirds  of our nation's wealth.

Despite the Supreme Court 's finding that corporations are basically people in the eyes of the law, corporations themselves cannot be moral or immoral -- they are entities, not sentient beings. We have a system that rewards the gamers, where winners take all, and influence peddling is rife; where the defense for a highly profitable company not paying taxes is that it is within the law. As American families face the looming April 15 tax deadline, it is tough to hear corporations claim that mere compliance is enough in a system where laws and loopholes can be bought and sold.

Corporate Tax Revenue as a share of G.D.P. 1949 - 2009

Who PAYS their taxes (the good guys)

Who pays their taxes?  According to 10-K financial statements submitted to the SEC, health care companies Humana, Medco, Wellpoint, and United Health all paid taxes at rates close to the 35% corporate maximum from 2008 to 2010. Some nation-wide family favorites fared well, too. Home Depot, Walgreens, CVS, Kohl's, and Best Buy all approached the 35% rate three years running. Good places to shop.

Some companies have been semi-responsible taxpayers, at least relative to the three-year average corporate tax rate of 13%. Retailers Costco, Walmart, and Target all paid in the mid-20% tax rate range. The tech industry had several companies paying taxes at annual rates between 15 and 20 percent: Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, Google, Apple, Amazon, Cisco, and Comcast.

payupnow.org

4/1/11: Which companies are paying their taxes. And which aren't.

Pay Up Now is an online effort by US Uncut Chicago members to boycott corporations who pay little or no federal income tax.

Choose a company, note the products or services you need to avoid, and click 'Send Message' to tell them to PAY UP NOW.

~ The page has the following information, but go there to get the chart ~

Company   Tax Avoidance Information (see References here)   Products


This is followed by a link to give you the opportunity to post to them.

Targets = Corporate Tax Cheats

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

Big U.S. corporations dodge up to $100 billion in taxes every year, which equals $1 trillion every decade that is not invested in our country’s future. Because of overseas tax havens and other tax loopholes, U.S. corporations are making profits in America but barely paying taxes here.

Stop Corporate Tax Dodging: Talking Points and Background Information

There's a direct connection between corporate tax cheats and what's happening to real people’s lives. If we close those loopholes, we wouldn't have to be cutting back on firefighters, library hours, student loans, and valuable public services.

Our current corporate targets

• Bank of America (primary target)
• Verizon
• FedEx

Some general signs for our actions

Click right on the graphics below to download in pdf.

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The Worst Idea in Washington DC

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-worst-idea-in-washington/2011/03/10/AFzQaOIC_blog.html

By Ezra Klein

Bruce Bartlett takes a look at the Balanced Budget Amendment all 47 Republicans signed their names to and pronounces it “quite possibly the stupidest constitutional amendment I think I have ever seen. It looks like it was drafted by a couple of interns on the back of a napkin.”

I think “stupid” is the wrong word. “Dangerous” is more like it. And maybe “radical.” This isn’t just a Balanced Budget Amendment. It also includes a provision saying that tax increases would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress — so, it includes a provision making it harder to balance the budget — and another saying that total spending couldn’t exceed 18 percent of GDP. No allowances are made for recessions, though allowances are made for wars. Not a single year of the Bush administration would qualify as constitutional under this amendment. Nor would a single year of the Reagan administration. The Clinton administration would’ve had exactly two years in which it wasn’t in violation.

Read that again: Every single Senate Republican has endorsed a constitutional amendment that would’ve made Ronald Reagan’s fiscal policy unconstitutional. That’s how far to the right the modern GOP has swung.

But the problem isn’t simply that the proposed amendment is extreme. It’s also unworkable. The baby boomers are retiring and health costs are rising. Unless you have a way to stop one or the other from happening — and no one does — spending as a percentage of GDP is going to have to rise. This proposal doesn’t interrupt those trends. It simply refuses to acknowledge them — or, to be more generous, it rules them unconstitutional. This is the equivalent of trying to keep your kid cute by passing a law saying he’s not allowed to grow up.

Another problem: In a recession, tax revenue plummets and GDP stops growing, but spending has to be sustained, or even increased, to a) give people unemployment insurance and Medicaid and other services they need and b) keep the economy from contracting violently. This amendments includes no provisions for recessions, meaning that when the economy contracted, the government would have to contract as well. That is to say, we’re still not out of one of the deepest recessions in American history, and every Senate Republican has co-sponsored a constitutional amendment to make future recessions worse. It’s just breathtaking.

A world in which this amendment is added to the Constitution is a world in which America effectively becomes California. It’s a world where the procedural impediments to passing budgets and raising revenues are so immense that effective fiscal management is essentially impossible; it’s a world where we can’t make public investments or sustain the safety net; it’s a world where recessions are much worse than they currently are and the government has to do more of its work off-budget through regulation and gimmickry. I would like to say something positive about this proposal, say there’s some silver lining here. But there isn’t. This is economic demagoguery, and nothing more. It’s so unrealistic that it would’ve ruled all but two of the last 30 years unconstitutional, which means it’s so unrealistic that there has not yet been a Republican president who has proven it can be done. And that doesn’t just suggest it can’t be done: It suggests that when Republicans are actually in power and have control of the budget, they know perfectly well that it shouldn’t be done. They’re just pretending otherwise for the moment.

By Ezra Klein  |  03:28 PM ET, 04/01/2011 

Republican budget plan envisions sharp cuts

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/05/us-usa-budget-cuts-idUSTRE7340BM20110405?feedType=nl&feedName=ustopnewsearly

WASHINGTON | Tue Apr 5, 2011 8:50am EDT

(Reuters) - Government spending would plummet by nearly $6 trillion over the coming decade under a Republican plan due to be unveiled on Tuesday, in a sharp contrast to President Barack Obama's fiscal plan.

The plan, crafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, envisions a total spending cut of $5.8 trillion over the coming decade, according to an aide.

That's well beyond the $4 trillion in savings envisioned by an Obama task force last year, and roughly six times the savings that Obama's own budget plan would generate.

Ryan's plan, which would take effect when the next fiscal year starts on October 1, is expected to propose sweeping changes to the Medicare and Medicaid health programs, as well as hard caps on government spending and tax cuts.

Though it is likely to win the support of the Republican-controlled House, it is not expected to get much support in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Still, it will probably push a debate over government spending that has dominated Washington this year well into the 2012 election season, when both Obama and many of his Republican adversaries will face voters.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; editing by Eric Beech)

Why there is a budget deficit; the top 1% own the wealth !

Polarised incomes? I predict a riot

Anthony Hilton
31 Mar 2011 

According to a research note from UBS published this week: "The 231 core staff who run Barclaysreceived remuneration of £554 million in 2010, whereas shareholders who provide £51 billion of equity capital received a dividend of £653 million."

The board, which is supposed to run the business in the interests of the owners, should hang its head in shame at that division of rewards. Those 231 employees could not operate without the shareholders' £51 billion, whereas the shareholders could most certainly find 231 others to run the bank, and for a lot less than the average £2 million-plus this lot were paid, given that, to borrow Warren Buffett's observation, they are probably making the mistake of confusing their value with the value of the seats in which they sit.

Profits might even be higher. The authorities today have created monetary conditions where banks can make easy profits to rebuild their balance sheets. The central banks adopted a similar policy after the banking crisis of 1982 and it worked then, though in those days bankers did not think government-guaranteed profits entitled them to bonuses.

This time we could be stirring up trouble for ourselves by allowing such inequality of income to re-emerge. Robert Wade, a professor at the London School of Economics, has noted how the polarisation of US society as reflected in its politics has gone from a high point in the Twenties to a low between 1950 and 1980 and back up to a high now.

His concern is this extremism in politics correlates very closely with extremes of income. By illustration, the share of the top 1% of households in US national income peaked at 22% in 1929, then fell progressively to a low of only 8% in the Seventies. It then took off in the Reagan years to hit 22% again in 2006.

It is hard to believe that the pattern in this country would be very different and it seems undeniable that polarisation in incomes leads to polarisation in society, that the gulf in incomes becomes a gulf in values.

There will, of course, always be anarchists looking for an excuse to kick in a window, but much more threatening for the Government and damaging for the country is the seething resentment of all the others in society who would never dream of such a thing

A list of the MNGOP’s cuts to Health and Human Services

I’m at a loss for words over the MNGOP’s draconian cuts to Health and Human Services. Fortunately, I don’t need to say anything. I’ll simply show you. Here’s a list of all of the cuts the Senate HHS bill would make:

• Meals on Wheels ($2.7 million; 50% cut)
• developmental disability family supports ($4.1 million; 50% cut)
• child care service developmental grants ($500,000; 100% cut)
• child care resource and referral grants ($1.5 million; 100% cut)
• subsidized adoption grants ($5.3 million cut)
• American Indian Child Welfare Program ($9.5 million; 100% cut)
• aging prescription drug assistance grants ($1.8 million; 100% cut)
• children’s mental health screening grants ($7.6 million; 100% cut)
• adult mental health crisis grants ($1.5 million; 100% cut)
• caregiver support grants ($952,000; 100% cut)
• relative custody assistance grants ($1.5 million cut)
• child welfare reform/prevention & early intervention ($1.6 million; 100% cut)
• Health Care Access Fund (25% cut)
• Department of Health General Fund (20% cut)
• Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (100% cut) funds  
• Statewide Health Improvement Program grants (100% cut)
• state loan forgiveness programs for medical training that maintain the state’s ability to recruit and retain health practitioners in geographically underserved urban and rural settings (100% cut)
• repeals the Early Expansion of Medicaid 
• families and children on Medicaid with incomes above 75 percent of the poverty rate ($13,898 for a family of three) would be dropped from Medicaid
• the same would apply to all those on MinnesotaCare with incomes above 133 percent of the poverty rate
• eliminates optional services like eyeglasses, contact lenses and prosthetics for Medical Assistance and MinnesotaCare recipients

Wow. Just wow.

FIGHT BACK USA TEACH-IN, April 5th

“FIGHT BACK USA”    

A NATIONAL WEBCAST TEACH-IN ON FIGHTING 

AUSTERITY, DEBT and CORPORATE GREED   

TO STREAM LIVE ON 

TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 2011

'60s Style Teach-In Meets the Digital Age in Live Stream Webcast

· 2:00-3:30 p.m. (EDT) National Webcast

· 3:30-5:00 p.m. (EDT) Local Campus Events on more than 167 Campuses Nationally

Frances Fox Piven (professor, CUNY Graduate Center) and Cornel West 

(professor, Princeton University) will host a national webcast teach-in addressing the 

roots of the current economic crisis and what people are doing to fight back this 

Tuesday, April 5, 2011. 

The event will stream live from New York City’s historic Judson 

Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South , New York, NY 10012-1018 

(www.judson.org).

More than 160 campuses nationally are hosting viewings of the webcast from 2-3:30 

p.m. (EDT); local campus “Do It Yourself Action Strategy Sessions” will follow from 

3:30-5 p.m. (EDT) in each location.

Professors West and Piven will be joined by economist Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia 

University); public policy analyst Heather McGhee (Demos); President Richard 

Trumka (AFL-CIO) with activist reports from a Wisconsin student, a homeowner 

fighting foreclosure and a public school teacher fighting budget cuts, lay-offs and the 

assault on collective bargaining rights.

A Press Briefing (with Q&A) with Piven, West and other panelists will take place 

following the webcast, on site at Judson Memorial Church starting at 4 p.m.

The live stream event is designed to help campus and community viewers “connect the 

dots” between corporate/bank greed and tax-avoidance, personal and public debt, socalled “austerity” and the ongoing attacks on public employee unions, public education 

and social services to the most needy Americans.

Most importantly, the teach-in seeks to help young people across America understand 

how the recent actions undertaken by the brave citizens of Wisconsin are the key to 

turning the tide away from increasing inequality and misery, and toward the 

development of a sustainable and healthy American society in the 21st century. T

he teach-in seeks to infuse the fight back in the states with the energy and commitment of 

American youth whose future hangs in the balance.

· For Pre-Event Interview with Frances Fox Piven contact: kellyc@wpunj.edu

· To see the list of campuses signed on visit www.fightbackteachin.org

· For a list of campus teach-in organizers to interview: 

contact kellyc@wpunj.edu

· Media/Press Seating will be available at Judson with 1:30 p.m. check-in at the 

Media/Press Table.

Christine Kelly, Ph.D.

Professor of Political Science

William Paterson University

Raubinger 441

973-720-3430

;

Director, American Democracy Project

Raubinger 442

973-720-392

Here in Minneapolis, the teach-in will be 

at Augsburg College

in Foss 20-B

at 1pm

on Tuesday April 5th

There is also a teach-in @University of Minnesotas @ Morris !!

You go, guys!