Community | May 04, 2009 | 4 comments

WTF: Republicans Defend Tax Havens Against Obama Crackdown

source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/04/republicans-defend-tax-ha_n_195617.html

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atomiclegion
President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner plan to announce on Monday a crackdown on offshore tax havens that could produce $210 billion in new tax revenue over the next decade.

The White House will face opposition to the proposal from the business community and Congress. Before the announcement, a Republican leadership staffer circulated an email citing a Bloomberg report saying the proposal "would be the biggest tax increase on U.S. corporations since 1986."

But the amount Obama's plan would reportedly save is a far cry from the estimated $1 trillion the United States loses to offshore tax havens over a ten-year period. A 2008 Senate report (PDF) estimated that "the United States loses an estimated $100 billion in tax revenues due to offshore tax abuses" every year.

In January, the Government Accountability Office issued a report (PDF) that found that 83 of the 100 largest publicly traded U.S. corporations reported subsidiaries in countries listed as tax havens or "financial privacy jurisdictions."

Many of those corporations are beneficiaries of billions in taxpayer dollars under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Morgan Stanley, for instance, boasts 273 subsidiaries in tax havens, with 158 in the Cayman Islands alone. Citigroup's got 427, with 90 in the Cayman Islands, and 59 of Bank of America's tax-haven subsidiaries are there as well.
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4 comments // WTF: Republicans Defend Tax Havens Against Obama Crackdown

  • JohnA
    • 0
      JohnA  

    • I agree that corporations should pay their fare share, even more as they use more of the infrastructure. In theory. But pragmatically, corporations have shareholders to answer to, they aren't just going to take a raise in their taxes laying down, they will make their profits, which means they will raise their prices, so who pays, us. So you can regulate them, set up a oversight committee, hire bureaucrats to see that they pay the taxes and don't gouge the customers, but who pays for those bureaucrats and oversight commitees, us. So now we have them taxed and regulated, so now what do they do, move to Dubai and take their jobs with them. I am a taxpayer and a shareholder, it is a very percipitious position, not an easy question to deal with, and I do not have a perfect answer.

    • 2 years ago
  • macfan
    • 0
      macfan  

    • WTF Is right The GOP is all ways complaining
      about Tax's yet they are Against Crackdown
      on Tax Havens which would save Tax payers
      billions of dollers it makes no sence that GOP
      would defending the people that are wasting
      are money that is not going Make the
      American poeple like The party of no

    • 3 years ago
  • atomiclegion
  • Stradius
    • 0
      Stradius  

    • There's a lot of accountants and executives sweating about this right now I bet. The spotlight is swinging around towards them again, hehe.

    • 3 years ago
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