As Burger King heads north for Canada\u2019s lower corporate tax rate, we speak to Rolling Stone contributing editor Tim Dickinson about his new article, “The Biggest Tax Scam Ever.” Dickinson reports on how top U.S. companies are avoiding hundreds of billions of dollars by parking their profits abroad \u2013 and still receiving more congressionally approved incentives.<\/p>\n
Dickinson writes: “Top offenders include giants from high-tech (Microsoft, $76 billion); Big Pharma (Pfizer, $69 billion); Big Oil (Exxon\u00adMobil, $47 billion); investment banks (Goldman Sachs, $22 billion); Big Tobacco (Philip Morris, $20 billion); discount retailers (Wal-Mart, $19 billion); fast-food chains (McDonald\u2019s, $16 billion) \u2014 even heavy machinery (Caterpillar, $17 billion). General Electric has $110 billion stashed offshore, and enjoys an effective tax rate of 4 percent \u2014 31 points lower than its statutory obligation to the IRS.”<\/p>\n
“The inversion trend is just the tip of a very destructive iceberg that\u2019s seen the hollowing out of our corporate tax base. And so, the inversions, you know, is just basically a legal scam that lets a company technically offshore itself for a lower tax rate. And it goes sort of hat in hand with companies shipping massive quantities of corporate profits overseas through sort of elaborate accounting schemes.<\/p>\n
And while it\u2019s overseas, it sits there tax-free, accumulates tax-free kind of like a 401(k) does. And so, right now there\u2019s about $2 trillion in corporate profits that are stockpiled overseas, on which the U.S. government is technically owed something like half a trillion dollars. So, at the same time that we\u2019re cutting food stamps, that we\u2019re cutting home heating aid to the elderly, you know, there\u2019s literally a jackpot of half a trillion dollars that politicians on both sides of the aisle just won\u2019t go after, because there\u2019s just an imbalance of power there. The corporate power has grown much greater than state power in this case.”\u2013Tim Dickinson<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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