Let's Tell Multinational Corporations To Just Pay Their Taxes

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Let-s-Tell-Multinational-C-by-Dave-Johnson-130524-501.html



Let's Tell Multinational Corporations To Just Pay Their Taxes
OpEdNews Op Eds 5/24/2013 at 00:07:28
By Dave Johnson

At yesterday's Senate hearing the CEO of Apple said they follow the law when they "defer" billions and billions of dollars in taxes they owe by keeping profits "out of the country." He's talking about the "Subpart F" corporate tax loophole that practically forces companies to move jobs and factories and profit centers out of the country. ("Double Irish" to those in the know. "Double Irish With A Dutch Sandwich" to those who know too much.) So let's change that law and make these companies pay the taxes they already owe.

Apple "follows the law." Other giant companies also "follow the law" when they pay little or no taxes. The thing is, they also do what they need to do to keep the laws from being changed to benefit We the People instead of a few ultra-wealthy plutocrats.

Apple has transferred what Senator Levin called its "crown jewels" and its "golden goose" to a non-US subsidiary company. Apple transferred its "intellectual property" to an Irish "company" that Apple owns and runs. The company doesn't really do anything except it "owns" the patents, etc. Irish law says a company that isn't actually doing anything in Ireland doesn't have to pay taxes, and US law says that Apple doesn't have to pay taxes on profits of a foreign subsidiary company until the company passes its profits to the parent US company. As a result Apple is keeping more than $100 billion in the accounts of that Irish company. (The accounts happen to be in the US.)

Google also follows the law. Its Bermuda-based subsidiary made more than $10 billion in 2011, about 80% of its pre-tax profit that year.

[pscot]

1. The law is a carefully designed labyrinth

that only a tax lawyer can traverse.

[Demeter]

2. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

etc.

Thanks, I needed that!

[siligut]

3. Create a new investment company for corporations only

Only make it a pyramid scheme that will collapse after we get all the back taxes out of them. We'll let Mitt Romney take the fall.

Or create a tax shelter and then have it wiped out by a cataclysmic event, but not really. Of course we don't do stuff like this, we try to reason with the unreasonable.