REPORT: You Have More Money In Your Wallet Than Bank Of America Pays In Federal Taxes

US Uncut takes to the streets to fight for Main Street

By Zaid Jilani  | 26 February 2011

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Today, hundreds of thousands of people comprising a Main Street Movement — a coalition of students, the retired, union workers, public employees, and other middle class Americans — are in the streets, demonstrating against brutal cuts to public services and crackdowns on organized labor being pushed by conservative politicians. These lawmakers that are attacking collective bargaining and cutting necessary services like college tuition aid and health benefits for public workers claim that they have no choice but than to take these actions because both state and federal governments are in debt.

But it wasn’t teachers, fire fighters, policemen, and college students that caused the economic recession that has devastated government budgets — it was Wall Street. And as middle class workers are being asked to sacrifice, the rich continue to rig the system, dodging taxes and avoiding paying their fair share.

In an interview with In These Times, Carl Gibson, the founder of US Uncut, which is organizing some of today’s UK-inspired massive demonstrations against tax dodgers, explains that while ordinary Americans are being asked to sacrifice, major corporations continue to use the rigged tax code to avoid paying any federal taxes at all. As he says, if you have “one dollar” in your wallet, you’re paying more than the “combined income tax liability of GE, ExxonMobil, Citibank, and the Bank of America“:

[Gibson] explains, “I have one dollar in my wallet. That’s more than the combined income tax liability of GE, ExxonMobil, Citibank, and the Bank of America. That means somebody is gaming the system.”

Indeed, as politicians are asking ordinary Americans to sacrifice their education, their health, their labor rights, and their wellbeing to tackle budget deficits, some of the world’s richest multinational corporations are getting away with shirking their responsibility and paying nothing. ThinkProgress has assembled a short but far from comprehensive list of these tax dodgers — corporations which have rigged the tax system to their advantage so they can reap huge profits and avoid paying taxes:

this happens all the time,” said Robert Willens, a tax accounting expert interviewed by McClatchy. “If you go out and try to make money and you don’t do it, why should the government pay you for your losses?” asked Bob McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice. The same year, the mega-bank’s top executives received pay “ranging from $6 million to nearly $30 million.”

pay a dime of U.S. federal corporate income taxes” between 2008 and 2010.

grand total of $0.00. At the same time, Citigroup has continued to pay its staff lavishly. “John Havens, the head of Citigroup’s investment bank, is expected to be the bank’s highest paid executive for the second year in a row, with a compensation package worth $9.5 million.”

uses offshore subsidiaries in the Caribbean to avoid paying taxes in the United States. Although Exxon-Mobil paid $15 billion in taxes in 2009, not a penny of those taxes went to the American Treasury. This was the same year that the company overtook Wal-Mart in the Fortune 500. Meanwhile the total compensation of Exxon-Mobil’s CEO the same year was over $29,000,000.

largest corporation — filed more than 7,000 tax returns and still paid nothing to U.S. government. They managed to do this by a tax code that essentially subsidizes companies for losing profits and allows them to set up tax havens overseas. That same year GE CEO Jeffery Immelt — who recently scored a spot on a White House economic advisory board — “earned total compensation of $9.89 million.” In 2002, Immelt displayed his lack of economic patriotism, saying, “When I am talking to GE managers, I talk China, China, China, China, China….I am a nut on China. Outsourcing from China is going to grow to 5 billion.”

fourth largest bank in the country, Wells Fargo was able to escape paying federal taxes by writing all of its losses off after its acquisition of Wachovia. Yet in 2009 the chief executive of Wells Fargo also saw his compensation “more than double” as he earned “a salary of $5.6 million paid in cash and stock and stock awards of more than $13 million.”

In the coming months, politicians across the country are going to tell Americans that the only way to stave off huge deficit and balance the budgets is by gutting programs for the poor, eviscerating support for the middle class, eliminating labor rights, and decimating the government’s ability to serve the public interest. This is a lie. The United States is the richest country in the history of the world, and income inequality is higher now than it has been at any time since the 1920′s, with the top “top 1 percentile of households [taking] home 23.5 percent of income in 2007.”

It is simply unfair for Main Street Americans who’ve already been battered by one of the worst economic crises in our history to have to continue to sacrifice while the rich and well-connected continue to rip off taxpayers and avoid paying their fair share. That’s why a Main Street Movement consisting of Americans who are fed up with the status quo is rocking the nation, and one of its first targets should be tax dodgers like Bank of America and Boeing.

UPDATE

All across the country, Main Street Americans are protesting tax dodgers like Bank of America. A picture from one such demonstration (HT: @loril):

UPDATE

shut down a major branch in Washington, D.C. today.

UPDATE

@jashsf):

UPDATE

allisonkilkenny):

UPDATE

This art school dropout in Maine was outraged at having to pay more taxes than Bank of America (HT: RawStory):

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Apply the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) to corporations. Problem solved. Next? Flag 39 people liked this. Like Reply * the unincorporated Flag 11 people liked this. Like Reply Flag Flag 3 people liked this. Like Exactly. Better do it fast because once every one is in on the con they will change the rules. Flag 2 people liked this. Like Reply Flag 19 people liked this. Like Reply Flag 7 people liked this. Like Reply Who are they paying the higher taxes to? Flag 3 people liked this. Like Reply Other countries. In their consolidated financials for 2009, they estimate the equivalent U.S. tax to the $15 billion they paid globally was about $12 billion. Had they paid ALL their taxes in the U.S., which was impossible, they would have saved $3 billion. That suggests had they not TRIED to avoid U.S. taxes, they would nave paid less overall. Flag 4 people liked this. Like Reply Because corporations exist to make money for their shareholders, not to lose money in furtherance of a political objective in a certain country. Flag 5 people liked this. Like Reply Not only do they not pay taxes in the US, they are recipients of the generous tax breaks the US gives ALL the oil companies. How can we get those bozos to stop doing that? Flag 7 people liked this. Like Reply Flag 7 people liked this. Like Reply This comment was flagged for review. Flag 21 people liked this. Like Reply Sean Laney Today 03:08 AM in reply to fractionofawhole  Both parties *are* to blame, albeit not equally. On the other hand, if you are claiming the Democratic party is progressive, that is the silliest thing I have heard in a long time. They are a corporatist party just like the Republicans. Flag 2 people liked this. Like Reply Betsy Yesterday 01:16 AM in reply to lance peeples  Flag 6 people liked this. Like Reply Stephanie Fralin Yesterday 01:53 PM in reply to lance peeples  Flag 3 people liked this. Like Reply So maybe we assess tax on income, ie sales or other sources of revenue, kind of like the rest of us persons have to? Flag Like Reply Sean Laney Today 03:11 AM in reply to the_proctor  No, it would not work at all that way. Retail sales would be impossible unless markup was ridiculously high. You have to tax profits, not sales, but there are ways to make such things much more honest. Flag Like Reply Flag Like Reply Sean Laney Today 03:09 AM in reply to Stephanie Fralin  Most corporations *are* small businesses. Flag Like Reply Flag Like Reply Flag 31 people liked this. Like Reply No no no!!! It was ACORN!!!! Flag 8 people liked this. Like Reply SOROS! (drink!) Flag 3 people liked this. Like Reply 🙂 Flag 3 people liked this. Like Reply InsidiousProphet 02/26/2011 04:57 PM in reply to MoodyEllis  Since 1968 we have had 5 Republican presidents and 3 Democratic presidents (Clinton was more of a republic or corporatist president) Nixon: 5 years Carter: 4 years Reagan: 8 years Bush 41: 4 years Bush 43: 8 years Obama: 3 years So in the last 43 years we have had a Republican president for 28 years and a Democratic president for 15 years. So you can spin things all you want but facts are facts. 8 years of Bush along with a 6 year republican majority in both houses of congress under Bush led to the near collapse of our financial system and our economy as American jobs were shipped overseas in record numbers. (Edited by author 1 day ago) Flag 38 people liked this. Like Reply Flag 7 people liked this. Like Reply I take issue with your assertion that President Bush ignored the housing crisis. See news below. What do you think? (Edited by author 1 day ago) Flag Like Reply Sean Laney Today 03:18 AM in reply to My Editor Friend  Flag Like Reply Flag 1 person liked this. Like Reply One of the biggest lies from the right is the wealthy and corporations are the ones that pay the most in taxes of every kind. Greed is one of the strongest addictions known to mankind, hence the tax unfairness in America today. (Edited by author 1 day ago) Flag 44 people liked this. Like Reply They continually and repeatedly make that claim and no one calls out their lies. Flag 24 people liked this. Like Reply Flag 29 people liked this. Like Reply Flag 13 people liked this. Like Reply Duopoly, Both parties drink from the same Corporate well! Flag 10 people liked this. Like Reply Flag 9 people liked this. Like Betsy Yesterday 01:21 AM in reply to Onyxcat  Flag 1 person liked this. Like Reply Sean Laney Today 03:23 AM in reply to Neoconhater  The capital gains tax is a privilege for the ultra rich, and rewards those who do not work for a living. Such profits should be taxed the same as any other income, not given special rate lower than that applied to the income of working people. The pretext here is that with their “surplus” cash from investment they’ll invest more…and create jobs, and all the rest of that con game that goes by trickle down/supply side economics. Voodoo is the right name, but neither the media nor the (bought) politicos will call it out for what it is, so the con continues… Flag Like Reply Heaven forbid MSM might actually do some reporting. I am no longer donating to NPR due to their inept coverage of the WI rally. Flag 4 people liked this. Like Reply We know them as corporate welfare bums. Flag 13 people liked this. Like Reply Flag 7 people liked this. Like Reply Flag 30 people liked this. Like Reply And be fully liable with severe consequences for not paying taxes. Flag 18 people liked this. Like Reply