"You know, we have the second highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. Microsoft, which is a great American company, has zero exports from the United States. They have a lot of exports from Ireland, because, guess what, Ireland has a 12.5 percent corporate tax rate; we have a 35 percent corporate tax rate."Sounds scary. How could America be the #1 ranked country to do business, while Ireland is #22, if it's so bad?
Wait, I know. Two-Thirds Of Corporations Did Not Pay Taxes. According to last month's Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, between 1998 and 2005 "about two-thirds of corporations operating in the United States did not pay taxes" because of a variety of corporate tax loopholes.
We give the rich so many breaks, they end up not paying taxes. If you use that Ireland example, the US taxes paid by corporations, as a percentage of GDP, was about 2.2 percent; Ireland raised close to 4 percent.
So give this bullshit talking point a rest, or at least update and give all the information if you're trying to make a point. Also, look at Ireland now, they're dead broke.
NOTE: The reason Ireland is so attractive to high-tech companies like Microsoft is the corporate tax break; it's a tax exemption on royalties from newly patented technologies and processes, provided that the research leading to the patent took place in Ireland.
Dell has already left Limerick, Ireland for Poland where they get lower taxes. It's a corporate race to the bottom which is the backbone of the Republican free market utopia. Their "free market" is propped up by the government through breaks and insists on exploiting cheap labor around the world. And that has got us where?
Source: Washington Monthly
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