We Cannot Allow This to Continue ...

[yodermon]

34. .. and not to pile on (but i will)...GAO: U.S. corporations pay average effective tax rate of 12.6%

http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/01/news/economy/corporate-tax-rate/

U.S. companies face the highest official corporate tax rate in the world. But there's a big difference between the rates set out by law and the cash that's actually collected.
Large, profitable U.S. corporations paid an average effective federal tax rate of 12.6% in 2010, the Government Accountability Office said Monday.

<snip>

U.S. corporate tax collection totaled 2.6% of GDP in 2011, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That was the eleventh lowest in a ranking of 27 wealthy nations.
The Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has hauled several corporate executives to Capitol Hill over the past year for testimony on their tax practices.
A report released by the subcommittee last month charged that Apple (AAPL) used a complicated system of international subsidiaries and cost-shifting strategies to avoid paying taxes on some $74 billion in income from 2009 to 2012.
In September, the subcommittee heard from Microsoft (MSFT) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), whom Levin called "case studies of how U.S. multinational corporations... exploit the weaknesses in tax and accounting rules and lax enforcement."
A subcommittee report at the time alleged that Microsoft had saved nearly $7 billion off its U.S. tax bill since 2009 by using loopholes to shift profits offshore. H-P, the report said, avoided paying taxes through a series of loans that shifted billions of dollars between two offshore subsidiaries.