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U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog
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April 19, 2009
Tax cheats, including TARP recipients, fester on offshore islands
 Last week, on Tax Day, U.S. PIRG released Tax Shell Game: The Taxpayer Cost of Offshore Corporate Tax Havens (news release). The cover is at left. The report (full report pdf) illustrates how 83 of the 100 biggest corporations in America dodge taxes by maintaining foreign subsidiaries in off-shore locations. The report by Tax and Budget Reform Advocate Nicole Tichon documents that the cost of these tax shelters is $100 billion and lists the cost by state. Keith Olbermann did a nice piece on the report. You can watch it on our tax loophole page. Olbermann disparages competing teabag protests cooked up by coin-operated front groups and promoted by Fox News before explaining our report:
As handfuls of sheep possibly wearing LED vests, as seen earlier in Oddball, are herded into made for TV protests of taxation with representation, the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) has now analyzed a Senate report from last year that showed just how much we lose as a nation in tax revenues hidden by corporations... Of course, what makes things worse for the public is that many tax loopholes are held by TARP recipients, as first reported by GAO. For example, Citigroup has 427 tax haven corporations; 90 in the Cayman Islands alone. From Tax Shell Game:
Those who support tax havens typically argue that American corporations are already taxed enough or too much. But, whatever one thinks is the proper rate of corporate taxation, there should not be a parallel shadow system of tax avoidance that leaves other taxpayers shouldering the burden. Markets work best when companies prosper based on their productivity and ability to innovate, not on their access to sophisticated tax lawyers and to tax-avoidance schemes. Government reform groups joined us in releasing the report across the nation, as these reports from Iowa , Utah and West Virginia illustrate. While we didn't go to the Cayman Islands to release it, the report did make it onto the website CaymanNetNews: [Ohio] Activists plan to hand out “wish you were here” post cards from the Cayman Islands, which they describe as “a prominent corporate tax shelter.”
Posted by Ed Mierzwinski at April 19, 2009 08:53 AM
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