Exclusive: U.S. taxpayers’ virus relief went to firms that avoided U.S. taxes

Many corporations pay no taxes, and actually receive tax rebates from the government, and much of this tax avoidance is passed on to rich investors in the form of capital gains, dividends and bond interest. Corporate tax avoidance is only one way the rich get richer at the expense of the rest of us. There are a ton of others ways this occurs. Amazon paid no federal income tax in 2018 and received a $129 million tax refund on taxes it did not pay. That $129 million and the unpaid tax money goes straight into the pockets of billionaire shareholders. Click here for other ways the government is making the rich wealthier at your expense.

Reuters reported last week that the US government is “giving millions of dollars in American taxpayer money via the CARES Act to a number of corporations that have avoided paying U.S. tax.

“In all, Reuters’ analysis of public data found around 110 publicly traded companies have each received $4 million or more in emergency aid from the program.

Of those subject to taxes,” which means profitable, “12 of the companies recently used offshore havens to cut their tax bills, the analysis found. All together, these 12 received more than $104 million in loans from U.S. taxpayers. Seven of them paid no U.S. tax at all for the past year.

The program, which provides low-interest loans that are forgivable if companies use most of the money to pay employees, has been widely criticised for problems ranging from early bottlenecks that prevented small businesses from receiving money, to confusion that led millions of dollars to be handed out to relatively affluent firms.

The Treasury Department declined to comment.

Of the almost 110 recipients of $4 million or more, Reuters found 46 paid no U.S. corporate tax for the last year.”

This is just another example of the massive corruption of both major political parties, the Supreme Court, and the Federal Reserve. The billionaires control them all.

 

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The Rich are the Prime Beneficiaries of the $4.7 Trillion Coronavirus Relief ACT

Not only did legislators of both major political parties make certain when writing the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) in late March 2020 that the top 0.05 percent receive 80 percent of the benefits, but they also wrote the legislation so that more than 80 percent of a change in the tax law included in the bill benefited the top, as well. This is according to a non-partisan congressional committee.

The CARES Act was sold by the government and the corporate news media as providing worker and business relief for those suffering from the coronavirus quarantine. In fact, it was written to save the financial well being of the billionaires and multi-millionaires who have corrupted both major political parties, and the federal and likely all state governments in the process. The corruption clearly extended to much of the corporate news media since few of them reported on this.

The Guardian points out that the “change – which alters what certain business owners are allowed to deduct from their taxes – will allow some of the nation’s wealthiest to avoid nearly $82 billion of tax liability in 2020.

Nearly 82% of the benefits from the tax law change will go to people making $1 million or more annually in 2020, according to an analysis by the joint committee on taxation (JCT).

Taxpayers will lose nearly $90 billion from the change, which suspends a restriction introduced in the 2017 tax bill.

The change allows owners of businesses known as pass-through entities to lower their taxes by deducting as much as they want against income unrelated to the business.

Before, owners of pass-through entities could deduct a maximum of $250,000 in losses from non-business income such as stocks and bonds. This limitation was introduced in the 2017 law to offset other tax benefits going to firms.”

The rich lost trillions of dollars in paper profits with the stock markets down around 15 percent from their all-time highs. The billionaire owners of hedge funds (largely unregulated investment businesses with 99 or fewer clients) and big-time real estate investors will be the primary beneficiaries.

Currently, the top 1 percent steal 37+ percent of all income produced in the United States compared to 8 percent in 1980. Three people (Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates) own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of Americans. This lopsided distribution of both income and wealth has come about due to political corruption. Those at the top of the financial food chain are eating those at the bottom via corrupt politics and with deadly impacts. For example, the US white mortality rate has dropped three years in a row for the first time since the Spanish flu of 1918 struck.

I also want to point out that the CARES Act itself provides a little over $5000 to each member of the 99 percent while giving away an average of over $16 million each to the members of the top 0.01 percent, proving how rampant corruption is in the government. Click The CoronaVirus Stimulus Bill: The Rich Get 5 Trillion, We Get the Crumbs for more on that.

Click Tax change in coronavirus package overwhelmingly benefits millionaires, congressional body finds-Washington Post for more on the story.

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What the Corporate News Media Does Not Want You to Know: Protests Against Income Inequality Continues in France

Reuters reports that “Scuffles broke out on Saturday as around 7,000 “yellow vest” demonstrators marched through Paris in a 10th consecutive weekend of protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s government.”

What the corporate news media does not want you to know is that these folks are protesting because their taxes were raised while the taxes on the rich were simultaneously reduced. This is why French President Macron is known as “The Rich Man’s President” in France.

In the United States, we have a rich man’s political party in the Republican Party, and a rich man’s political party in the Democratic Party. We are easily fooled into believing we have choices, when we do not. Working French people are not so easily fooled.

The demonstrations on January 19th were largely peaceful but Reuters Television reporters said they saw clashes break out late in the afternoon between police and demonstrators, some wearing masks, in Paris’ Invalides district.

Protesters threw firecrackers, bottles and stones at the police who responded with water canon and tear gas to push them back. The police in France estimated 27,000 people took part in the protests around the nation, 7,000 of them in Paris. Ten people have died during the protests.

Reuter, like other corporate news media, claim “The “yellow vest” protests – which make use of fluorescent jackets French motorists are required to carry in their cars – began in November over higher fuel taxes.” The corporate news media do not want you to know that almost simultaneously with the rise in the fuel tax, taxes on the rich were decreased. In other words, working people are paying more in taxes to make up the decline in taxes the rich were paying.

Those fuel taxes were subsequently scrapped, yet the movement has morphed into a broader anti-Macron protest.

December’s demonstrations wreaked some of the worst violence seen in decades in Paris, as rioters burned cars and damaged shops and businesses.

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What the US Corporate Media Doe Not Want You to Know About the Class Warfare That Continues on the Streets of Paris France

On Saturday, December 1, 2018, riots continued in France against political corruption. 224 people were arrested and 110 injured for what amounts to protesting against secret deals between politicians and the rich that call for the government to redistribute income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent. Your US corporate news media does not want you to know this.

The French government under President Emmanuel Macron reduced taxes on the rich and their corporations while raising taxes on the 99 percent. Macron claimed taxes were raised on petrol, diesel, and other items needed by the 99 percent in order to combat carbon emissions that cause global warming. That, of course, is a complete load of bullshit, but this part of the deal is being reported by the US corporate propaganda machines, known as the corporate news media, but not the other part about taxes being reduced on the rich.

Notice President Macron did not raise tax rates on beef production or offer to end subsidies to this industry to combat carbon emissions. There are more than 200,000 cattle farmers in France, producing 1.5 million tonnes in carcass weight equivalent (CWE) a year, making it Europe’s leading beef producer and the seventh largest in the world. Studies show the beef is among the biggest producers of carbon emissions in the world.

According to a report in the Guardian, “Agriculture is a significant driver of global warming and causes 15% of all emissions, half of which are from livestock…Remove the artificial support given to the livestock industry and rising prices will…” curb red meat production. “In that way you are having less government intervention in people’s diet and not more.”  (Click here for the Guardian story.)

However, reducing subsidies to French corporate beef manufacturers would be the same as raising taxes on rich shareholders, bondholders, and CEOs, as well as the 99 percent. However, reducing subsidies to the rich was never in the political equation and was likely crafted behind closed doors.

Working people cannot buy secret deals with corrupt politicians. This is simply a fact of life. To get politicians to alter the views created by secret deals to say, redistribute income from the working class to the rich, such as Macron has done, working folks need to take to the streets to voice their displeasure with corrupted politicians and political systems.

Macron has devised a nice scam to enrich his buddies, except the working class of Paris is not buying the lies as readily as US citizens permanently inhale the lies of their politicians and corporate news media, while treating the lies as gospel.

The French president’s corruption seems to have united many on the grassroots right and left in France. BFM TV reported that France’s intelligence services had identified 80 to 120 extreme-right sympathizers at the heart of the violence, while other media claimed tags and logos at the scene suggested extreme leftwing and anarchist organizations were involved.

Macron has done the impossible. He has united more and more citizens on both sides of the political equation with his corruption.

 

 

 

 

 

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What the US Corporate News Media Doesn’t Want You to Know: Nine Days of Riots in France Are Caused By Redistributing Income From the 99 Percent to the Rich

French President Emmanuel Macron is called “The President of the Rich” for a reason.

Paris has been in flames over Macron’s insistence to shift much of the tax burden from the rich and corporations to the 99 percent. Much of the US corporate news media would have you believe the riots are simply being played out because of an increase in fuel taxes of which the stated purpose is to cut greenhouse gas emissions by reducing consumption.

Now here is what much of the US news media does not want you to know.

Macron reduced taxes on the wealthy and corporations and then increased government investments, which included spending to reduce school class sizes, improve instruction in poor neighborhoods, add services for the learning-disabled, and bolster vocational training for the unemployed. Macron is also helping out his rich corporate buddies by having the government increase subsidizing research in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence that promises to revolutionize transportation, health care, and defense, as well as increase corporate profits, dividends and share prices, most of which will redound to the richest of investors at public expense, and especially at the expense of the poor and working class who are now paying higher taxes to fund these programs.

Needless to say, reducing tax revenues while increasing government spending meant Macron had to do something to staunch the bleeding government coffers by increasing taxes on the 99 percent. He did this by raising taxes on fuel, allegedly to accelerate the shift from carbon-emitting fossil fuels that cause global warming. He also increased other taxes paid by the 99 percent.

“You are committing violence with your policy. It’s you that are going after the poor to give to the rich!” thundered François Ruffin, a firebrand of the leftist France Unbowed party.

Mr. Macron was guilty of a “heavy moral, economic, and historical sin,” the best-selling economist Thomas Piketty wrote in the newspaper Le Monde.

Notice the massive difference between what occurs when the tax burden is shifted from the rich to the poor in France and in the USA. We in the USA have become quite docile with our GMO sodas, beer, and cupcakes as our income and wealth has been redistributed to the 99 percent over the last forty years. The US affluent now steal around 37 percent of the total income produced in the USA compared to 8 percent forty years ago, and government policies have been the conduit by which the rich have achieved this at the expense of the rest of us. We in the USA do nothing about it but lazily buy into these policies.

Macron Economic Reforms Stronger Than Trump Tax Cuts–CNBC

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What Would Happen if the US Increased Selected Tariffs to 35 Percent On Select US Corporate Products?

Let’s assume that tariffs are raised in the near future to 35 percent on the goods US corporations export to the United States from their manufacturing facilities abroad. What would happen? Think Nike, Ford, United Technologies, Microsoft, Dell, Campbell’s Soups and thousands of other corporations.

The corporate news media will lie to you and say prices would go up, or the economy would tank. Totally wrong. Lies.

If select tariffs were enacted, the stock market bubble would deflate since corporate profits would decline. On the other hand, the Parasites of Wall Street are now so big that they are sucking the life out of the 99 percent. This means the stock markets are going to tank anyway, and sooner than you might expect. See The New Recession Is Knocking at the Door, and It’s Going to Be Worst Than the Last One–JohnHIvely.Wordpress.com.

The things that make up the wealth of nations are the things that are manufactured. The stock markets are a tool to redistribute income from those who actually produce the wealth of nations to those who produce nothing save for political and financial power. A vast decline in the stock markets would redistribute economic and political power back to those who produce the wealth of the United States.

The bond markets would tank too, if select tariffs were enacted. That means wealth inequality would decline in the USA. Currently, the top 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Wealth are the things that you own, like houses, stocks, bonds, gold, cars, toys, smart phones, etc…. The video above was made years ago and the statistics the moderator uses are skewed even more to the ultrarich now than when the film was produced.

US manufacturing jobs would come home, probably by the millions. Wages would be forced up with so many jobs coming home. Demand for goods and services would accelerate and power the economy forward. The days of the bubble economies would be over. In other words, it would give life to the host that the Parasites of Wall Street, including all those hedge fund managers, have been sucking dry.

Income inequality would decrease because more people would have decent paying jobs, while the rich would see their share of income decline. The rich now steal roughly 36 percent of all the income created every year in the United States, up from 8 percent in 1980. That’s precisely why the current economic expansion is the worst in modern US history in terms of job and wage growth, as well as growth in the Gross Domestic Product.

Our social safety nets, such as social security, medicare and medicaid, as well as our roads, schools, and other infrastructure would be financially strengthened.

The rich would have less money to corrupt government and both political parties. Let’s face it. Income and wealth inequality is produced by political inequality.

Foreign governments would not need to retaliate since the products of their nation’s businesses would not be subject to the tariffs.

The time has come for placing tariffs on the goods of US corporations which have exported jobs to China, Mexico and elsewhere, and then exported the goods those jobs produce to the USA.

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Raising Corporate Taxes: Oregon and the New Tax Revolt

Oregon is ranked dead last among the fifty states in corporate taxes. That’s why Measure 97 is on the ballot come election day in November. The top federal corporate rate is 35 percent, yet many corporations making billions of dollars a year each pay little or no taxes. In many cases, corporations receive federal tax rebates by the billions on taxes they never paid. That means the effective tax rate for many major corporations is negative. This explains another reality; US corporations are the least taxed of any major industrialized nation, regardless of the myths and lies thrown out by the Fox Propaganda and other networks.

Corporations like Nike currently own such Oregon politicians as Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden, Wall Street congressional representatives Earl Blumenauer, Greg Walden, Suzanne Bonamici and Kurt Schrader. These representatives are always voting to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent on behalf of big corporations. Corporations should be made to pay higher state taxes in Oregon in order to pay the people of Oregon for the use of their politicians.

When you total up all the taxes businesses really pay, and compare that amount to the total corporate profits generated in the state, liberal Oregon is dead last. That’s the best way to compare effective tax rates. Other rankings, like those published by the Tax Foundation, ignore the actual amount of taxes companies pay and focus instead on incidental factors.

Most state rankings have a fair degree of variability, with states jostling around a bit in the rankings year to year. That Oregon has remained at the bottom of these rankings for the past three years is a strong sign of just how little corporations pay in taxes in the state, compared to the profits they make in the state.

While Oregon lets big corporations skate by and pay low minimum taxes, the state’s schools and services remain critically underfunded. If Oregon’s corporate tax collections were in line with the rest of the country, Oregon would have the revenue it needs to fund strong schools and services that will grow our economy and help hard-working Oregonians get ahead, protect their health, and retire with dignity.

Measure 97 is the solution to Oregon’s low corporate taxes. By focusing a tax increase only on large C corporations, those doing more than $25 million in Oregon sales, Measure 97 will raise significant revenues for the investments that grow Oregon’s economy, all while protecting smaller businesses that are already paying their fair share.

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Apple Inc. Ordered to Pay $14+ Billion in Taxes It Owes the Irish Government

The European Union has ordered Apple Incorporated to pay over $14.5 billion in taxes it has been ducking illegally in Ireland. If Apple is forced to pay this amount, it will reduce Apple’s profits. That may drive Apple’s share prices and dividends downward, which will disappoint investors, such as hedge funds, Wall Street Investment banks, individual millionaire and billionaire investors, etc….

The New York Times reports,

“Europe’s competition enforcer said that Apple’s illegal deals with the Irish government allowed the technology giant to pay virtually nothing on its European business in some years. The arrangements enabled Apple to funnel profit from two Irish subsidiaries to a “head office” with “no employees, no premises, no real activities,” the commission said.

By doing so, Apple paid only 50 euros in taxes for every million euros in profit during 2014. As part of its ruling, Europe demanded that Ireland recoup 10 years’ worth of back taxes, some 13 billion euros, or about $14.5 billion, plus interest.”

Apple is sitting on a pile of cash, $230+ billion, so the $14.5 billion it has avoided in taxes is a drop in the bucket.

“’U.S. companies are the grandmasters of tax avoidance,” said Edward D. Kleinbard, professor at the Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California and a former chief of staff to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.'”

Naturally, the US corporate propaganda machine, such as the National Review, has viciously attacked the EU ruling. Apparently, the editors think only the little guys should pay taxes, and that US corporations should get a free ride in using the variety of infrastructure of Ireland and the rest of Europe that the 99 percent of Ireland pays for. Ireland’s government plans to appeal the EU’s ruling because it is claimed Apple owes much more in taxes.

In other words, the National Review supports redistributing income from the 99 to the 1 percent, and that rich should not pay any taxes.

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Bernie Sanders and the Nearly $1 Trillion of Lost Taxes the Corporate Propaganda Machine Doesn’t Want You to Know About

The corporate news media does not operate independently, especially of the influence of its advertisers, and its editors, and that is why they prefer to keep you ignorant of certain facts. For example, when China manipulates its currency, this increases the profits of US corporations manufacturing there, and exporting those products to the USA. See https://johnhively.wordpress.com/2016/02/12/the-trans-pacific-partnership-the-op-ed-the-liberal-and-conservative-corporate-media-doesnt-want-you-to-see/

That’s precisely why US government and Federal Reserve officials castigate the Chinese government for doing this, but then do absolutely nothing to counteract it. To do so would cut into the profits of Nike, Microsoft, Dell, Campbell’s Soups, and thousands of other US corporations making stuff in China for export to the USA. This would make thousands of CEO’s and rich investors angry enough to cut off campaign contributions to Republican and Democratic Parties and their politicians. It would also send stock prices tumbling big time. Sweet lobbying jobs after politicians leave office would end. Corporate paid vacations called fact finding missions would disappear for politicians, as would money under the table, and those sweet speeches at $200,000+ a pop would vanish.

The Oregon Democratic Primary is coming up in a couple weeks, and Bernie Sanders is leading in the polls here. Quite naturally, the Oregonian newspaper is blitzing its readers with anti-Sanders messages in the form of editorials and news stories. The editors are doing everything they can to shift the election to the Wall Street candidate.

There has not been one positive or even neutral story about Sanders in the newspaper in the last two months, which is most likely a symptom of why the Oregonian has been suffering from a continuously declining readership. The newspaper is just a ghost of what it once was because more and more Oregon citizens realize the newspaper is mostly propaganda for the 1 percent along with occasional legitimate news stories.

Over thirty-five million jobs have been exported from the United States over the last twenty-five years. The Oregonian editors, along with all other corporate news outlets, have been careful to not report this loss of jobs and the tax dollars that once came with them when they were still here. The tax dollars lost equal nearly a trillion dollars a year.

Everything that Bernie wants to finance; free college tuition, medicare for all, and more, would be easily financed if those jobs were still here, rather than in China, Vietnam and elsewhere.

Bernie Sanders is against those disastrous trade policies which have paved the legal road for exporting jobs overseas, and which has paved the legal road for creating jobs over there, instead of over here. So, quite naturally, the editors of the Oregonian are for them, and against Bernie. It would be in the interest of the vast majority of US citizens to put an end to these international income and political power redistribution scams, falsely marketed by the Oregonian editors and other supporters as international trade agreements.

But it would not be in the interests of the Oregonian advertisers and their rich investors to put an end to them. It also would force the Oregonian editors to be responsible and objective journalists. However, challenging cherished beliefs with critical thinking, logic, and facts is among the last thing many people want to do. That’s precisely why the Oregonian editors support the Wall Street candidate; Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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Another Example of How Income is Redistributed from the 99 to the 1 Percent Via Senator Ron Wyden and the Rest of the Corrupt US Government

Here’s the story.

Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden was elected to represent the people of Oregon in the US senate. Instead, the senator represents Wall Street, along with major out-of-state corporations. This is why Wyden is one of the major tools the rich use in the US senate in their war against the middle class.

That’s precisely why Wyden always votes to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent via legislatively approved policies falsely marketed as free trade agreements. The latest Wyden income redistribution scam is called the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the largest income redistribution scam from the 99 to the 1 percent in US history.

This month, thanks to Wyden’s votes in the senate, the Newberg Oregon Paper Mill will be closing, resulting in the loss of 250 family-wage jobs and the largest tax source for the Newberg community. In all likelihood, in the next few months most the paper mill closure will cause a domino effect, resulting in the loss of several times as many jobs as those that are lost at the mill, as families are no longer able to afford to go to restaurants, get the car fixed and more, hurting local businesses that these family-wage union jobs support. Offshoring in the private sector also means less tax revenue in the public sector, leading to budget deficits, furloughs and layoffs of public employees, as well as less money for schools, roads, libraries, fire-departments and other critical public services. Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden is directly responsible for this situation through his votes on international income redistribution votes in the US congress.

All products manufactured at the Newberg mill were 100% recycled paper products made from recycled paper and wood gathered from the greater Portland, Oregon area. This mill was one of the last paper recycling facilities in Oregon and the recycled paper and wood once processed there will now likely be shipped and processed in countries with weak environmental policies.

The difference between the old higher US wages and the new lower third world wages will go straight into the already fat pockets of the super rich via higher corporate profits, rising share prices and surging dividends, thanks to Wyden’s votes. And also thanks to Wyden, because the 1 percent are now stealing over 37 percent of all the income in the US, compared to 21 percent in 2008, and 8 percent back in 1980.

What could be worse than this?

The worse-than-NAFTA TPP threatens to offshore more Oregon and US jobs by the millions, further driving down wages and further harming the environment. Wyden has carefully rammed this disaster for Oregonians through the US senate, although most Oregonians oppose it.

Enough is enough. Click here to urge your Member of Congress to vote against the TPP and click here to RSVP for the carpool from Portland to the December 8th rally in Newberg against the TPP.

Join Oregon Fair Trade and other organizations, people and trade-displaced mill workers on Tuesday, December 8th — the anniversary of NAFTA (an income redistribution scam voted for by then Wall Street Congressman Ron Wyden)— to voice Oregon’s opposition to the worse-than-NAFTA income redistribution scam falsely marketed as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Free Trade Agreement.

Tues, December 8th:

11:00 AM – Photo op outside closing Newberg paper mill

11:30 AM – Speaker’s panel with trade displaced mill workers

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