Apple, Cisco, Google, IBM, Microsoft … Screw You in Other Ways, Too

RULED BY MASS DECEPTION
SCREWED BY CORPORATIONS
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The top 20 U.S. companies hold more than $936 billion outside the U.S.

U.S. Corporations have accumulated nearly $2 trillion outside the U.S., up just under 12 percent from a year earlier. Six of the top  tech companies have more than 303 billion in their off-shore accounts.

U.S. taxpayers pay billions of dollars to the top technology companies that hold hundreds of billions in US government debt in tax-free offshore accounts.

307 US multinationals hold nearly $2 trillion in profits outside the U.S.The top 20 hold about a half of that amount.

Magic Mushrooms

“U.S. multinational companies reported earning 43 percent of their 2008 overseas profits in Bermuda, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland, more than five times the share of workers and investment they have in those jurisdictions, according to a 2013 Congressional Research Service report.”

“The loopholes in our tax code right now give such a big reward to companies that use gimmicks to make it look like they earn their profits offshore,” said Dan Smith, a tax and budget advocate at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Twenty-six of the largest U.S. multinationals paid no federal income tax between 2008 and 2012, according to Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), a public advocacy group.

The Sorry State of Corporate Taxes

“Our new report shows that both of these claims are false. Most of the biggest companies aren’t paying anywhere near 35 percent of their profits in taxes and far too many aren’t paying U.S. taxes at all. Most multinationals are paying lower tax rates here in the United States than they pay on their foreign operations,” said Robert McIntyre, Director of Citizens for Tax Justice.

Excerpts from the recent CTJ Report:

• 111 of the companies enjoyed at least one year in which their federal income tax was zero or less.

• 26 companies, including Boeing, General Electric, Priceline.com and Verizon, enjoyed negative income tax rates over the entire five-year period, despite combined pre-tax profits of $170 billion.

• Of the 125 multinational companies in this sample, two-thirds paid a lower U.S. tax rate than the rate they paid to foreign governments on their foreign profits. On average, their foreign effective tax rate was 12 percent larger than their U.S. effective rate.

• The total amount of federal income tax subsidies enjoyed by the 288 profitable corporations over the five years was $362 billion.

• Five companies — Wells Fargo, AT&T, IBM, General Electric, and Verizon — enjoyed over $77 billion in tax breaks during the five-year period.