...mention by the so-call US media? list of tax deductable materials for International corporations doing business in the US:
-ball point pens purchased from Trinidad for $8,500;
-disposable plastic gloves from Japan at $46.22 a piece;
-wrist watch batteries from China at $8,252 each;
-apple juice from Israel at $2,052 a liter.
By Senator Byron Dorgan, Washington Monthly.
" strange prices are the work of multinational corporations, and one of the biggest tax avoidance scams this country has ever seen. The ideological Right makes a big deal over what it calls "Tax Freedom Day" -- the day on which Americans supposedly have fulfilled their tax burden for the year. They neglect to mention that every day is tax freedom day for these multinationals. More than two-thirds of foreign-based multinationals doing business here -- and only a slightly smaller fraction of U.S.-based multinational firms -- pay no federal income tax at all. Many of the rest are paying a relative pittance. As a result, U.S. taxpayers are losing over $40 billion a year by one estimate, which is enough to pay for a prescription drug benefit in Medicare. Considering that corporate profits have soared in recent years something here does not compute. The manipulation of prices at the border is a big part of this screwy equation.
In the U.S., corporations are contributing a paltry 10 percent of the federal income tax burden, about one-half the level they paid in the 1960s..."
-ball point pens purchased from Trinidad for $8,500;
-disposable plastic gloves from Japan at $46.22 a piece;
-wrist watch batteries from China at $8,252 each;
-apple juice from Israel at $2,052 a liter.
By Senator Byron Dorgan, Washington Monthly.
" strange prices are the work of multinational corporations, and one of the biggest tax avoidance scams this country has ever seen. The ideological Right makes a big deal over what it calls "Tax Freedom Day" -- the day on which Americans supposedly have fulfilled their tax burden for the year. They neglect to mention that every day is tax freedom day for these multinationals. More than two-thirds of foreign-based multinationals doing business here -- and only a slightly smaller fraction of U.S.-based multinational firms -- pay no federal income tax at all. Many of the rest are paying a relative pittance. As a result, U.S. taxpayers are losing over $40 billion a year by one estimate, which is enough to pay for a prescription drug benefit in Medicare. Considering that corporate profits have soared in recent years something here does not compute. The manipulation of prices at the border is a big part of this screwy equation.
In the U.S., corporations are contributing a paltry 10 percent of the federal income tax burden, about one-half the level they paid in the 1960s..."