Corporate grifters

The next time you see Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan or some other Republican suckass on TV saying we're taxing corporations to death, taking away their incentives to create jobs and wealth and propel America to a new dawn of prosperity, bear in mind the fate of one such entity described in Matt Taibbi's new book, "Griftopia" (via tristero):

(After) securing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars through a series of bailouts, what did Goldman Sachs give back to the people of the United States in the year 2008?

Fourteen million dollars.

That is what the firm paid in taxes in 2008: an effective tax rate of exactly 1, read it, one, percent. The bank paid out $10 billion in compensation and bonuses that year and made a profit above $2 billion, and yet it paid the government less than a third of what it paid Lloyd Blankfein, who made $42.9 million in 2008.

How is this possible? According to its annual report, the low taxes are due in large part to changes in the bank's "geographic earnings mix." In other words, the bank moved its money around so that all of it earnings took place in foreign countries with low tax rates. Thanks to our completely fucked corporate tax system, companies like Goldman can ship their revenues offshore and defer taxes on those revenues indefinitely, even while they claim deductions up front on that same untaxed income. This is why any corporation with an at least occasionally sober accountant can usually find a way to pay no taxes at all. A Government Accountability Office report, in fact, found that between 1998 and 2005, two-thirds of all corporations operating in the United States paid no taxes at all. 

 Be ready to spit back those numbers, $14 million and 1 percent, when a Republican huckster on TV or down at the bar tries to tell you how besieged our corporate denizens are and how Obama  is trying to take away their money and property and throw them into collectivist communes.  As Taibbi pointed out, that's less than a third of what just one person, albeit an extremely well-compensated person, paid in taxes at Goldman.  The story of how much -- or little -- Blankfein himself paid is probably equally depressing.

And keep in mind that 1 percent is a model of responsibility compared to the two-thirds of corporations that pay no taxes at all.

They have been getting way with this for too long, and it's time liberals were armed with at least some facts to counter it, because Wolf Blitzer ainta gonna do it. This view of the aggrieved corporation is so prevalent, yet so far from the truth, that when you see the real numbers -- and this is just one typical example -- it would be a Colbert-worthy joke if it weren't so sad.  The tax code is so far in their favor, so not a grievance but a grift, that it's one of those opposite-day or up-is-down or "breadlines? what breadlines?" sandstorms kicked up to deny that you're seeing what you're actually seeing, just the mirage of an overheated brain.

We may feel like we're in a desert sometimes, but we know what we see, and it's no illusion. It's a royal fuckfest, with the corporation prince to our pauper.