Tax Day rallies @ Bank of America (3 pm), Nan Hayworth's (4 pm)-- join us!...

Hi all...

Twelve reasons to come to our Tax Day rally today 3 pm @ Bank of America 45 Market St. in Poughkeepsie:

[...then join WFP at 4 pm in front of Nan Hayworth's offices in Fishkill at 2 Summit Court, Suite 103!...]

[thx to Linda Abbott, Barbara Upton, Joe Seeman, 50+ folks signed to attend at this MoveOn.org event link:
http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/event.html?event_id=113991 -- join us tomorrow if you can, folks!...(will be presenting Bank of America with a bill for their federal income taxes due; they haven't paid in 3 years); Scott P. Humphrey will also be formally closing down his Bank of America checking/savings accounts too!]

[see http://www.usuncut.org/actions/239 http://www.activistresource.org/calendar/cal_event.php?id=15559 ]

[20+ others signed on to our link too(!): http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=202668686424445 !]

[attendees signed on already to join us today include Hudson Valley Area Labor Federation Coordinator Beth Soto, Rockland County Legislator Connie Coker, and Bruce Allison, Burr Hubbell, Carl Freitag, Elizabeth Cooke, Jason Arkin, Kate Luce, Luanne Seeley Nicholson, Lucia Minervini, Marlene Finch, Maya Goer-Palenzuela-- let's make this one BIG, folks-- reach out to all you know; bring big signs!]

Fact: Bank of America recently got $45 billion from the federal bailout-- but hasn’t paid any federal income taxes in three years-- while Dutchess County still deposits funds there, according to Dutchess County Finance Commissioner Pamela Barrack (recall: L.A./Philly no longer keep funds in irresponsible banks).
[see: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/02/19 ; http://www.MoveYourMoney.info -- nat.'l movement]

[.....and so without further ado then-- those twelve more reasons why you all need to come out today!...]

1. "This Tax Day, Make THEM Pay" by Michael Moore
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/this-tax-day-make-them-pay

2. "This Tax Day, Take Action to Stop Corporate Tax Dodgers" by Carl Gibson
http://www.alternet.org/story/150618/this_tax_day%2C_take_action_to_stop_corporate_tax_dodgers

3. "Tax Day Question: Who's Paying What?" by Joshua Holland
http://www.alternet.org/story/150625/tax_day_question%3A_who%27s_paying_what

4. These three from http://www.CommonDreams.org ...
"GOP Spreads Corporate Tax Disinformation, America Fights Back" by Allison Kilkenny
"US Uncut: The New Movement against Austerity and Corporate Tax Cheats" by Brian Tierney
"Super Rich See Federal Taxes Drop Dramatically" by Stephen Ohlemacher

5. "March Madness for Corporate Tax Dodgers" by Paul Buchheit
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/21

6. "Fighting for a People's Budget" by Katrina vanden Heuvel
http://www.thenation.com/blog/159939/fighting-peoples-budget

7. "Why President Obama Is Losing the Budget Fight" by Ari Berman
http://www.thenation.com/blog/159851/why-president-obama-losing-budget-fight

8. "Our Phony Budget Battles Are All Smoke and Mirrors" by Richard D. Wolff
http://www.alternet.org/story/150631/our_phony_budget_battles_are_all_smoke_and_mirrors

9. "A Slap on the Wrist for Mortgage Fraud" by David Dayen
http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=for_mortgage_fraud_a_slap_on_the_wrist

10. "After Budget Showdown, Women Under the Bus" by Katha Pollitt
http://www.thenation.com/article/159948/after-budget-showdown-women-under-bus

11. "This Tax Day, 'Farms' Owned by the Rich Provide Massive Tax Shelter" by Yasha Levine
http://www.thenation.com/article/159943/tax-day-farms-owned-rich-provide-massive-tax-shelter

12. "Paul Ryan's Authoritarian Freakout: Losing Control Budget Voting, 'Shut It Down'" by John Nichols
http://www.thenation.com/blog/159979/paul-ryans-authoritarian-freakout-losing-control-budget-voting-congressman-screeches-shu

Email all 25 of us at countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us-- need grass-roots support for our resolution!...
[again-- see http://www.MoveYourMoney.info -- why can't Dutchess Co. divest from B. of A. as L.A./Philly?]

[...and...can't make it to join us today?...call Congress: (866) 338-1015; Albany: (877) 255-9417!...]

Pass it on...(unless you truly enjoy budget cuts at all levels of gov. while this corporate welfare persists)...

Joel
444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net

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From http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/this-tax-day-make-them-pay ...

April 15th, 2011 2:55 PM
This Tax Day, Make THEM Pay

By Michael Moore

Do you wonder (like I do) what the tax accountants and executives are doing over at GE this weekend? Frantically rushing to fill out their IRS returns like the rest of us?

Hardly. They're taking the weekend off to throw themselves a big party and have a hearty laugh at all of us. It must really crack them up to see us like suckers scurrying around to make sure we report everything to Uncle Sam -- and even send him a check, if necessary.

The joke's on us, folks. GE and tons of other corporations will have a tax bill for 2010 of ZERO. GE had $14.2 billion in profits in 2010. Yet they will contribute NOTHING to the federal government while every last dime is soaked from us.

In the latest budget deal, our politicians could have tackled the deficit by stopping the flow of these ill-gotten billions to corporations. Instead they cut billions from "wasteful" programs that do "wasteful" things, like create new jobs, drive economic growth, and help the needy and our nation's children. It's Democracy in reverse and it sickens me.

GE spends $20 million a year to lobby Congress to throw themselves this party. But do you know what speaks louder than $20 million? 20 million votes! 20 million people, and more, standing together and taking to the streets. That starts now, with you.

This coming Monday, April 18th is Tax Day -- and that's the day when "we the people" will demand our country back from these corporations in events all across the country. You can find the nearest event to you here.

MoveOn members -- along with union, community, and environmental allies -- will gather outside the headquarters and local offices of the biggest corporate tax dodgers to deliver tax bills from the American people. And we'll demand that our leaders make these corporate deadbeats pay.

We're doing this because we don't buy into the Big Lie: that greedy teachers caused the crash on Wall Street! That the selfish firefighters sent millions of jobs overseas! That pregnant woman, infants, and children are sending us into deficit!

No, it was the big corporations that did this. It was the CEOs and the top 1% of the country. THEY brought on the mortgage crisis. THEY made off with trillions of dollars from our economy. THEY are systematically destroying the middle class. And THEY have bought and sold the very people elected to represent us!

On Monday, we will have something to say to Exxon, Chevron, and the big banks that crashed our economy and got billions in bailouts, like Citigroup and Bank of America, who pay little or no federal income tax. In fact, the IRS will likely give them a tax REBATE. If that doesn't boggle your mind then nothing will.

The Tax Day events are about sending this message: We are coming after you, we are stopping you and we are going to return the money, jobs, and homes you stole from the people. This is your tipping point, Corporate America. And I, for one, am glad it's going to happen this Monday.

If you've never been to an event like this before, this is the time. And don't go alone, because none of us can win this fight by ourselves. Plus, it's more fun and exciting to go along with friends and family to be part of real democracy in action -- not the store-bought kind Big Business gets on Capitol Hill.

I really hope you can make it. This is our chance, my friends. Take the time on Monday to make your voice heard. I can guarantee you I will. Please join me.

P.S. In case you missed this story in yesterday's NY Times: "In Financial Crisis, No Prosecution of Top Figures." It exposes how the leaders in both parties made sure no one on Wall Street was going to jail after the collapse of 2008.

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From http://www.CommonDreams.org ...

Published on Sunday, April 17, 2011 by The Nation
GOP Spreads Corporate Tax Disinformation, America Fights Back

by Allison Kilkenny

US Uncut launched another nationwide day of protest this week involving around forty participating chapters. The activism strategies again ranged from traditional protest to more creative forms of occupations such as San Francisco’s flash mob in a Bank of America.

This latest campaign follows a busy week for the fledgling organization. US Uncut, along with the Yes Men, have been at the center of the media’s attention following their successful pranktivist duping of the AP.

The anti-corporate tax dodging movement is growing momentum during a time when GOP leaders such as Eric Cantor, Michele Bachmann, and Tim Pawlenty propagate daily the lie that corporations are already overtaxed in America. While corporations claim they’re taxed at 35 percent, their actual effective tax rate is much, much lower after deductions, credits, and write-offs.

During the 1950s, the decade in which more people joined the middle class than at any time in history - before or since - corporations paid 49 percent of their profits in taxes. Last year, it was about half that rate, a decidedly more modest 26 percent. In 2010, corporate tax collections totaled $191 billion - down 8 percent from $207 billion as recently as 2000.

Perhaps a more telling yardstick, corporate tax revenue in 2009 came to just 1 percent of gross domestic product - the lowest collection level since 1936, or three-quarters of a century ago. In 2010, it edged up to a puny 1.3 percent - the second-lowest since 1940. Even worse, the shriveled tax collections came at a time when corporations were registering an all-time high in profits. At the end of 2010, corporations posted an annualized profit of $1.65 trillion in the fourth quarter. In other words, the more they made, the less they paid.

America has a revenue problem because of a two-tier taxation system that steals from the poor and offers corporate welfare to the rich. While tax evasion has always been an American business tradition, the practice has now reached frenzied proportions where the government is no longer simply turning a blind eye to the practice, but actively facilitating it.

The Fed gave hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money to hedge funds and other investors with addresses in the Cayman Islands during the bailout. The addresses belong to companies with American affiliations like Pimco, Blackstone (Pete Peterson’s company that seeks to privatize Social Security,) and Waterfall TALF Opportunity, a company owned by Christy Mack, wife of John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley. The government is now actively subsidizing tax evasion by using citizen dollars to fund corporate stealing for companies like Blackstone that seek to privatize Social Security, which would rob poor Americans of one of their last great social protections.

The legend of welfare kings and queens is true, but these societal parasites don’t live in the ghettos. They live in the Hamptons and on Wall Street. Many Americans now realize this and are beginning to fight back.

Thousands turned out this week to protest Gov. Rick Snyder’s budget cuts in Michigan. 
"The script Gov. Snyder has written for his Republican cronies is not the kind of Michigan we want to live in," Herb Sanders of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers told the crowd. "If the politicians won't listen to us at the Capitol, then we're prepared to take the fight to them in their home districts."

Sarah Palin graced Wisconsin with her presence for the sole purpose of stating approval of Gov. Scott Walker’s decision to strip unions of the right to collectively bargain. She was enthusiastically booed by a counter-protest, a response that so flustered right-wing mouthpiece Andrew Breitbart that he rushed the podium to scream “GO TO HELL!” at the crowd before encouraging a community that had organized the event to ironically applaud the death of community organizing.

Every week, there are more teacher and students protests opposing education cuts, labor protests demanding the right to collectively bargain (not the right to higher wages or safer working conditions, but the mere right to a seat at the table,) and more citizens gather to oppose the two-tier America where the poor suffer while rich corporations raid the Treasury.
© 2011 The Nation

Allison Kilkenny is the co-host of the progressive political podcast Citizen Radio (wearecitizenradio.com) and independent journalist who blogs at allisonkilkenny.com. Her work has appeared in The American Prospect, the L.A. Times, In These Times, Truthout and the award-winning grassroots NYC newspaper The Indypendent.

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Also-- for good measure-- don't forget these eight crucial facts too(!):

Fact #1: Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Portland have all passed laws to hold banks accountable to their communities.
[ http://www.MovetheMoney.info/ ; http://www.NewRules.org/ ]

Fact #2: Millionaires used to pay 91% federal income tax rate in 50’s under Ike-- now 35%.
[ http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ILikeIke ]

Fact #3: Middle-class New Yorkers now actually pay a higher percentage of our income in state and local taxes than millionaires do.
[ http://www.ITEPnet.org/wp2009/ny_whopays_factsheet.pdf ; http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org/ ; http://www.alternet.org/story/149613/ ]

Fact #4: Millionaires used to pay a 15 1/2% state income tax rate in the 1970's under Rockefeller-- but now pay only 8.97%; in the early 70's there were 14 different state income tax brackets-- now there are only five (so that single income earners making $20,000 a year and couples with incomes of only $40,000 now pay literally the same state income tax rate that millionaires do)-- local property and sales taxes have skyrocketed through the roof over the last 40 years in order to make up the difference for millionaires not paying what they used to in state income taxes.
[see: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/taxhistory2.htm ]

Fact #5: Recent Marist, Siena, Quinnipiac, & Hart polls all show the vast majority of NY'ers strongly support a millionaires tax (in fact, a The New Yorker last August 16th published an article by D.J. Surowiecki about how even most registered rank-and-file Republican voters are for a millionaires tax(!).
[see: http://www.capitaltonight.com/2011/02/groups-band-together-to-push-millionaires-tax/ ;
http://www.hungeractionnys.org/Poeple%20SOS%20release%202011.pdf ;
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=940073&category=state ;
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/08/16/100816ta_talk_surowiecki ]

Fact #6: All of the following members of the Growing Together NY Coalition stand in strong support for a new tiny millionaires tax (and at least partial re-implementation of a stock transfer tax on Wall Street as well)-- NYS Coalition Against Domestic Violence, NYS AFL-CIO, NYSUT, CSEA, PEF, AFSCME, NY Jobs with Justice, Dutchess Outreach, NY Statewide Senior Action Council, NYS Alliance for Retired Americans, Interfaith Alliance of NYS, Interfaith Impact of NYS, Environmental Advocates, Citizen Action, NYS Community Action Association, Hunger Action Network of NYS, New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, Fiscal Policy Institute, et. al.-- see http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org/ .

Fact #7: "The richest one percent of households increased their share of all income statewide from 10 percent in 1980 to 35 percent in 2007" (Dec. 13th from http://www.FiscalPolicy.org/ ).

Fact #8: "Top earners have seen a four percentage point decrease in their federal income taxes, thanks to the Bush Administration tax cuts extended for two years by the Obama Administration."
[see http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPI_NewYorkShouldContinueTheIncomeTax.pdf ]

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From http://www.CommonDreams.org ...

Published on Sunday, April 17, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
US Uncut: The New Movement against Austerity and Corporate Tax Cheats
by Brian Tierney

By Monday April 18th most Americans will have finished filing their taxes, helping to boost government revenue at a time when the only thing most politicians care to discuss is how to cut the deficit.

But a large pack of corporate citizens will probably not be worrying about paying their dues; tax day, like any other day for them, will be strictly devoted to growing their bloated profit margins.

Recent reporting that some of the largest U.S. corporations have paid little to nothing in federal income taxes in the past few years hasn’t stopped the upside-down debate in Washington. The beltway budget battle remains focused on one blunt question: how much of a beating should be given to workers and the poor in order to bring down the deficit while leaving the corporate bottom line unscathed?

Beyond Capitol Hill, however, the scope of corporate tax-dodging during a period of devastating budget cuts has inspired the ire of thousands of Americans and given birth to a new people-powered movement to hold big business and their mouthpieces in Washington accountable for the cuts. It’s called US Uncut, a campaign that has produced hundreds of direct actions targeting notorious tax cheats like Bank of America and Verizon while agitating around other major offenders like General Electric and Citigroup.

Thanks to tax breaks, creative accounting schemes, loopholes and off-shore havens, these companies are raking in billions and getting away with systematic tax-evading operations that would land ordinary people in jail.

Launched back in February, US Uncut has so far made Bank of America and Verizon the primary targets of its actions. According to US Uncut, Bank of America’s 2009 pre-tax income was $4.4 billion. As the fifth largest corporation in the world, Bank of America received $45 billion in bailout funds in 2008 and 2009 but didn’t pay a single dime in federal income taxes in 2009. In the same year, Bank of America received up to $1.9 billion in tax refunds.

How did they get away with it? Bank of America has 115 foreign tax-havens where it keeps its income in order to avoid taxes. And Bank of America is not alone. Roughly 25 percent of the largest U.S. corporations don’t pay any federal income taxes.

US Uncut has adopted a model of organizing first used in the U.K. where an organization called UK Uncut has been using hundreds of creatively-themed, non-violent direct actions targeting companies that flout their duty to pay taxes while budget crises are crippling social programs. The “flash mob”-style actions are meant to both pressure companies and galvanize the broader population through attention-grabbing and highly publicized direct actions.

According to its website, “US Uncut is a grassroots movement taking direct action against corporate tax cheats and unnecessary and unfair public service cuts across the U.S. Washington’s proposed budget for the coming year sends a clear message: The wrath of budget cuts will fall upon the shoulders of hard-working Americans. That’s unacceptable.”

The approach taken by US Uncut relies heavily on the use of social media and a decentralized, do-it-yourself system for organizing protest actions and posting them on its website.

George Taghi, a leading organizer with US Uncut in Washington DC, explained that US Uncut wants to change the public discourse around the budget and the deficit and engage the public with its approach to activism.

“US Uncut’s goal is to punctuate and change the narrative that says ‘we have a spending problem’ to ‘we have a revenue problem,’” Taghi says.

When asked why US Uncut is focused on tax-dodging companies rather than the lawmakers who enable them, Taghi pointed to the corporations as the real source of power in Washington:
“US Uncut has focused on bringing protests to companies’ storefronts, instead of lawmakers, because that is where the true powers lie. On the whole, for companies to claim ignorance or deny responsibility for our lopsided tax code – that legalizes off-shoring of profits and accounting gimmicks – is a farce.

These companies have lobbied Congress for such privileges and donate to representatives to enact loopholes.”

In addition to Bank of American, US Uncut is shining the spotlight on other corporations like Verizon, which reported a pre-tax income of $24.2 billion last year and was rewarded with a $1.3 billion tax refund. Citigroup has paid zero dollars in taxes in the last four years, according to US Uncut. The company also was the largest recipient of government bailout money, totaling a staggering $476 billion.

The issue of corporate tax-dodging has been pushed into the limelight in recent months. Last month, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders compiled a list of “the 10 worst corporate income tax avoiders.” The list included companies such as those on the US Uncut target list, in addition to Exxon Mobile, which made $19 billion in profits in 2009, paid no federal income taxes and received a $156 million tax rebate, according to SEC filings. While the official corporate tax rate is 35 percent, Goldman Sachs managed to whittle its tax obligations down to 1.1 percent of its income in 2008.

In March, the New York Times published a front-page article describing how General Electric, the second largest corporation in the world, paid nothing in federal income taxes last year while it reported $14.2 billion in profits. On top of that, GE claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

“Its extraordinary success,” according to the Times article, “is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore.”

Add to all of this GE’s anti-worker policies – which include plant closures that have eliminated a fifth of GE jobs in the U.S. since 2002 and the company’s drive to cut the wages and benefits of its mostly unionized workforce – and you have what President Obama lauds as a “model” for American business.

On Wednesday that model was the target of a hoax executed by the same activists of US Uncut, in partnership with the “Yes Men,” an anti-corporate group notorious for pulling pranks that parody corporate propaganda. The two groups put out a fake GE press release that announced GE’s plans to return all of its $3.2 billion tax refund in response to public outrage. The stunt brilliantly put GE into an awkward public relations situation in which the company was forced to openly admit that it in fact had no intention of paying anything back.

Given GE’s relationship with the White House, the egregiousness of its tax-dodging helps to contextualize the willingness of the Obama administration to inflict such harsh cuts like the ones that went through Congress last week to avert a government shutdown. Instead of being sanctioned for its tax cheating, GE’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, was awarded a top position in the Obama administration as chair of the president’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

So when it comes to spending and budget cuts, forget hope and change. Compromise and capitulation is the catchphrase of this administration, and this should surprise no one who knows the company that Obama keeps. In fact, the president’s “compromise” last week with Republican House Speaker John Boehner cannot even be called that. Democrats and the White House conceded even more in spending cuts than what Republicans themselves originally proposed at the beginning of the year. And it was a “compromise” that Obama applauded as the largest annual spending cut in U.S. history.

On Wednesday Obama delivered a speech in which he seemed to be changing course and finally turning back to the progressive ideals that inspired millions during his campaign. His argument for progressive tax policies, making the wealthy pay more and preserving critical programs like Medicare and Social Security was a rhetorical departure from what we’ve seen from his administration over the past several months of budget wrangling.

Following the speech, liberal commentators voiced their exuberance and suggested that Obama’s disillusioned base can again find some cause for excitement. Others were not as impressed.

“[Obama] has given so many great speeches before, only to disappoint. Unfortunately, he stills adheres to the right’s narrative that spending cuts on domestic programs has to happen to the tune of nearly $1 trillion over ten years,” said Taghi from US Uncut.

The speech also left the door open to unspecified reforms to Social Security and Medicare that will play into the hands of the right-wing tea party-backed Republicans in Congress who want to privatize and destroy those programs.

Last week Congress voted to chop $38 billion dollars from the budget with cuts that will affect health programs, heating assistance to the poor, education programs, the Environmental Protection Agency, and food safety. Funding for essential women’s health services provided by Planned Parenthood just barely made it passed the GOP’s ideological chopping block, but Obama and the Democrats still traded away money for those services for residents of the District of Columbia.

And while the let-them-eat-cake budget cutters are using the deficit to justify these cuts at the federal level, they have also been on the attack at the state level where budgets are being slashed and unions are under assault.

The campaign against unions has helped breathe some life back into the labor movement. But what started as an anti-union crusade in Wisconsin – inspired and funded by the right-wing billionaire Koch brothers – has spread to other states, and it’s not just Republicans who are out to make union workers scapegoats for the deficit. Democratic governors in California, New York, and Illinois are using the deficit as an excuse to force major concessions from public sector unions.

In response, unions and labor activists have been mobilizing and fighting back. A national day of action last week on April 4th saw over a thousand union rallies and other actions for labor across the country.
In the midst of this labor upsurge, US Uncut is another component of the progressive fightback, and it’s a campaign that goes directly to the corporate tax-dodgers who are materially and ideologically feeding the narrative about a deficit crisis that can only be solved through budget cuts. A unified progressive fightback – including labor, environmentalist and consumer rights groups – is needed in order to push back against austerity and fight to rebuild the tattered social safety net that Washington is poised to shred altogether.

The right yearns for capitalism unfettered, and to get there they are relying on a structure in Washington that can only be described as plutocracy. And neither party is willing to consider serious cuts to the massive Pentagon budget. Unpopular wars abroad and unpopular tax cuts at home for the wealthy are all evidently worth the resultant suffering inflicted on millions here in the U.S. under the budget ax.

In Wisconsin and other states where workers have been fighting back, an important example has been set. This class war no longer needs to be asymmetrical. Working people can and must fight back, not just against the budget cutters in Washington, but against their corporate paymasters whose anti-worker and tax-dodging practices have helped set the stage for ruthless austerity.

We simply cannot defeat the high-powered corporate lobbyists on their own turf. If ever there was a time for progressives and the left to abandon the tired and feeble strategies of lobbying, letter-writing, and petition-signing, that time is now. We need to exert pressure where it will be felt – on the streets and in the workplace through mass mobilizations, strikes, and yes, militant direct actions.

US Uncut called for national days of action on “Tax Weekend,” April 15th to the 17th, and on Friday there were over 130 actions across the country posted on its website through tax day.

It’s time to go directly after the corporate powers using creative direct action and other forms of protest to expose their dirty war against workers and the poor.

Brian Tierney is a freelance labor journalist in Washington, DC

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This Tax Day, Take Action to Stop Corporate Tax Dodgers

By Carl Gibson, AlterNet

Posted on April 14, 2011, Printed on April 17, 2011

http://www.alternet.org/story/150618/this_tax_day%2C_take_action_to_stop_corporate_tax_dodgers

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, Public Radio and PBS all crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes? Me neither.

This weekend, millions of Americans will be paying their fair share of taxes to the government that protects, cares for and empowers them, while extremely profitable corporations will continue to pay no taxes at all.

The budget deal last week made clear that Washington never cared about deficit reduction and was instead more concerned about putting money back into the pockets of their corporate benefactors. Congress is cutting programs that college students, single moms and hungry kids depend on, while they let corporations bilk the government out of $100 billion in unpaid taxes every year.

It's long overdue for the American people to stand together and speak out. And now they are. This Tax Day will be the largest day of action against corporate tax cheats in American history.

In just six weeks, the will of the people of Wisconsin has risen to a thunderous roar that is now taking a major political toll on Wisconsin's leaders. Americans everywhere can accomplish the same when We, the People, choose action.

US Uncut has staged 160 actions against corporate tax cheats in just six weeks, and we're just getting started. The impact of our movement will only continue to grow as more people hear our message and start taking action in their communities.

Instead of merely petitioning these same congressmen who have been bought by the corporations bankrupting our country, this weekend we will be taking the fight directly to the corporations' doors in our own communities.

U.S. Uncut will be leading over 75 actions from coast to coast from the 15th to the 18th, and progressive groups uniting under the banner of the American Dream movement will be hosting hundreds more in towns large and small. Congress may not be asking for any "shared sacrifice" from their corporate financiers, but their constituents are.

Just as the founders banded together to fight a corrupt system of taxation without representation, today's Americans must unite to drive out the enablers of our corrupt system of representation without taxation.

This is the next wave of tax protest in America. It is a movement of Americans who pay their fair share, saying that we deserve better than budget cuts and diminished expectations. We are tired of paying more than our share of taxes to get less in return from government.

We know there is enough wealth in this country to make the American dream of equal opportunity a reality for everyone. The only question is whether corporations are willing to pay their fair share to provide for the health and prosperity of all. The movement you'll see in action on tax day is working to make that a reality.

You can join us by starting your own action by visiting our page. See you in the streets!

Carl Gibson is the founder of U.S. Uncut.

© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

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http://www.thenation.com/blog/159939/fighting-peoples-budget

Fighting for a People's Budget
Katrina vanden Heuvel
April 14, 2011  

On Wednesday, President Obama spoke in eloquent language of our social contract, of a progressive patriotism, and of a role for government that helps us “do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves.” It was a clear rebuke to the GOP’s Robin Hood in Reverse agenda—taking from the poor and middle-class in order to preserve tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

Obama made the right choice in defending Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and pushing instead for healthcare reform—even putting negotiating drug prices on the table. He again refused to renew the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy—a pledge he has made and broken in the past. He also called for cuts in a defense budget that has contributed two out of three dollars in increased discretionary spending since 2001.

Yet in many ways his approach continues to legitimize the inside-the-Beltway consensus that spending cuts must lead the way toward achieving fiscal responsibility. Just as the Simpson-Bowles Commission proposes, for every $1 raised by closing tax loopholes on wealthy Americans, the President proposes $2 in spending cuts. Two-thirds of those cuts would come from education, health and other social programs, while only one-third comes from the military budget. While the president speaks eloquently of his vision of “shared sacrifice,” in reality it is still a budget that hits the poor and the middle-class hardest while wealthy Americans and the military are asked to sacrifice far less.

An alternative approach that deserves more attention is the “People’s Budget” offered by the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC). It will be introduced in the House on Thursday and it is the strongest rebuke—in the form of an amendment—to the unconscionable “Ryan Budget” for FY 2012. It’s a budget that gives the people—according to poll after poll—exactly what they want (something which shouldn’t be a rarity in a healthy, vibrant democracy).

The People’s Budget lays out what a robust progressive agenda looks like. It protects an already frayed social net and promotes a progressive tax policy that makes millionaires, billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share. It doesn’t stop at cutting the low-hanging fruit at the Pentagon, instead it brings our troops home from two wars that cost trillions of dollars and do nothing to make the US safer, and resets and rethinks what real security means in the twenty-first century.

“The People’s Budget generates a government surplus by 2021 by closing tax loopholes, ending corporate giveaways to oil, gas and nuclear entities, bringing our troops home, and creating jobs that expand the American tax base,” said Representative Raúl Grijalva, co-chair of the CPC. “This is a sensible solution that listens to what the American people have said about where our budget priorities should be.”

A range of smart groups and allies are pursuing an inside-outside strategy to push these kinds of wiser solutions on the table in our skewed debate. On Thursday, a bipartisan group of Members of Congress and veterans will hold a press conference to discuss Rethink Afghanistan’s War Tax I.O.U. campaign. The campaign features an online tool that calculates the amount of income tax an individual is paying towards the war, and users then receive an “IOU” for that amount. Over 54,000 constituents have forwarded those IOUs to their representatives, urging them to rethink the excessive levels of war spending that are wreaking havoc on the federal budget.

While President Obama broke the silence about revenue in the current deficit debate, a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies—“Unnecessary Austerity”—outlines a bold plan for how Congress could raise more than $4 trillion over the next decade by reversing years of tax giveaways to the richest Americans and largest corporations. The eight new potential revenue sources, include: closing overseas tax havens; adding new tax brackets for households with more than $1 million in annual income; and instituting a modest financial transaction tax.

“Congress has prioritized tax cuts for the wealthy and failed to crack down on corporate tax dodgers, fueling a budget crisis,” said report co-author and Nation contributor Chuck Collins.

Joining the fight for a more sane approach to tax policy is a group of 700 business leaders and individuals in the top 5 percent of wealth and income who make up the Responsible Wealth network.

Along with United for a Fair Economy, Responsible Wealth’s new Tax Wealth Like Work Campaign focuses attention on the discrepancies in the tax system that reward income from wealth over income from work. Capital gains and dividend income are taxed at a top rate of only 15 percent, while income earned from work is taxed at a top rate of 35 percent.

As Congress and cash-strapped states struggle to balance budgets, these wealthy people are urging that the income from their investment portfolios be taxed at the same rate as work income. That was done in the late 1980s under Presidents Reagan and Bush, and restoring the rates would raise $84 billion in 2011. The campaign is also building support for Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky’s Fairness in Taxation Act, which would tax capital gains and dividend income as ordinary income for taxpayers with income over $1 million, and create higher income tax brackets for millionaires and billionaires.

Finally, this weekend and on Tax Day, US Uncut and MoveOn will provide some street heat, hitting the pavement in actions coast-to-coast, demanding that corporations making billions in profits but pay nothing in taxes pay their fair share.

President Obama’s speech this week starts to move the budget debate in the right direction. But it’s up to the people and allies inside Congress to take the struggle to the next level, turning the tide on our democracy deficit which has produced—as Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz recently put it—a country “of the one percent, for the one percent, and by the one percent.”

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Tax Day Question: Who's Paying What?

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet

Posted on April 15, 2011, Printed on April 17, 2011

http://www.alternet.org/story/150625/tax_day_question%3A_who%27s_paying_what

The right's anti-tax crusade has been so successful that in 2010 the federal government collected a smaller share of our economic output in taxes than it had in 60 years. That's created a large deficit, which is now being used to justify cuts to popular social programs.

Taxes have decreased dramatically for most American households since Ronald Reagan came to offcie 30 years ago. But our overall level of taxation, on average, obscures who's paying how much.

So, on this tax day, let's take a look at the way federal tax rates for different income levels have changed since 1981 (using this handy calculator and adjusted for inflation to 2010 dollars).

The federal income tax bill for a person making $15,000 is 51 percent higher today than it was 30 years ago -- a big jump.

If you make $20,000, your federal income taxes have gone up only slightly. You would have paid $2,498 in 1981, and this year you would pay $2,575.

If you make $50,000, your federal income taxes would have declined by 19 percent, from $10,710 to $8,625.

If you make $100,000, you'd be paying 33 percent less today than in 1981.

Someone making a really good living that brought in $250,000 would pay 47 percent less – that person's federal income tax bill dropped from $126,953 in 1981 to $67,398 today.

If you brought in a half-million dollars, your tab would have dropped by 49.5 percent, saving you around $150,000. It's about the same decrease for someone making a cool million.

These figures only consider taxable income, and the super-wealthy avoid paying their share of taxes through a variety of loopholes that decrease their adjusted income – the amount subject to taxes. But looking just at the rate-changes, a person making $10 million would have seen his or her tax bill drop by 50.4 percent.

And what about corporate income taxes? Unlike most countries that have one flat corporate tax rate, we tax corporations progressively. Effective tax rates for all corporations have declined since 1981, but the little guys didn't do as well as the big players. The effective tax rate for the most successful 5 percent of American companies declined by 42 percent since 1981, while effective rates for all companies dropped by just 10 percent (Excel).

There's an important caveat to all this, which is that it looks at federal income taxes in isolation. The problem with that is the federal income tax is among the most progressive taxes in this country, and yet it makes up only 20 percent of the overall taxes collected. The right has long used the progressive nature of the federal income tax to argue that only the rich pay taxes, which is miles and miles from the truth.

According to a 2007 study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the top one percent paid 5 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes, while the bottom 50 percent — many of whom pay nothing in federal taxes — paid 10 percent of their take, twice as much proportionately.

It also found that those in the bottom 80 percent of the earnings ladder paid around 9 percent of their incomes in Social Security taxes; the top one percent paid just 1.6 percent of theirs. After the income tax, payroll taxes represent the largest share of the federal take — those dollars represent a much bigger piece of the pie than corporate income taxes or taxes on capital gains.

A 2009 study by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy looked at state and local taxes in greater detail. The researchers found that those in the top 1 percent of the heap paid around 5 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes; the next 4 percent paid about 7 percent of theirs; the middle 5th paid just over 9 percent and those at the bottom of the ladder, the poorest 20 percent of the population, forked over almost 11 percent of their incomes on average to state and local governments.

They also looked at excise taxes — taxes on gas, cigarettes, alcohol and other goodies. They found that the “average state’s consumption tax structure is equivalent to an income tax with a 7.1 percent rate for the poor, a 4.7 percent rate for the middle class, and a 0.9 percent rate for the wealthiest taxpayers.”

So the dirty secret is that we really have a flat tax. That’s the conclusion of a 2007 study by Boston University economists Laurence J. Kotlikoff and David Rapson, who found that when you add it all up — state and local taxes, federal taxes and excise fees – “The average marginal tax rate on incomes between $20,000 and $500,000 is 40.3%, the median tax rate is 41.8%, and the standard deviation of all of those rates is 5.3 percentage points. Basically, most of us pay about 40%, plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.”

Anyway, happy Tax Day. And remember that while your taxes are lower than in other advanced countries, they don't get you free or very low-cost health-care, deeply subsidized university tuition or 21st century infrastructure!

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He is the author of The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy (and Everything else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know About Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America). Drop him an email or follow him on Twitter.

© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

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Our Phony Budget Battles Are All Smoke and Mirrors

By Richard D. Wolff, TruthOut.org

Posted on April 15, 2011, Printed on April 17, 2011

http://www.alternet.org/story/150631/our_phony_budget_battles_are_all_smoke_and_mirrors

Weeks of highly publicized debates - some in Congress, more in the mass media - brought Republicans and Democrats to a budget deal. To maximize public attention, they threatened a possible government shutdown. Both parties said that large government deficits and accumulated debt were "serious problems." They agreed that solving them required only spending cuts, not revenue increases. In unison, they repeated, "we" must "learn to live within our means."

In fact, both sides never actually engaged the deficit and the debt. They limited themselves to purely cosmetic, symbol-laden cuts (Republicans) and refusals to cut (Democrats). Aiming at the 2012 election, both parties used the deficit and budget debates purely to impress their voters.

Basic numbers tell the true story. The current (Fiscal Year 2011) budget spends about $3.5 trillion while receiving $2.0 trillion in tax revenues. The difference of $1.5 trillion (the equivalent of $1,500 billion) is this year's deficit. The US Treasury must borrow that from whoever will lend to the US government. After much hot air, Republicans and Democrats reached a "historic compromise," namely a spending cut of $38 billion. That will reduce this year's deficit from $1,500 billion to $1,462 billion, an economically insignificant sum. The sound and fury of Washington's debates signified nothing was to be done about the actual deficit.

Republicans pretend to be deeply troubled by huge government deficits run up in recent years. They conveniently forget why those deficits soared: (1) capitalism's crisis increased unemployment, and so, cut income tax receipts, and (2) Washington response was to borrow trillions and spend them on bailing out banks and credit and stock markets. Republicans revive their old mantra: reduce deficits by cutting "wasteful spending" and "government mismanagement," which turns out to mean the social programs they don't like. Republicans hope to cash in politically on popular upset over the crisis' costs and the government's unfair and ineffective response.

Democrats pretend to be as troubled by deficits as Republicans. They parrot Republicans in denouncing wasteful government spending and mismanagement. However, they champion fewer spending cuts than Republicans, hoping thereby to cash in politically on popular support for helpful government programs needed especially in hard times. Democrats are also loudly oppositional where that might appeal to their voters (e.g. saving Planned Parenthood from cuts).

Democrats and Republicans did not even discuss, let alone agree on, tax increases on the wealthy or on corporations as ways to cut deficits. At the same time, their proposals for cutting spending were economically insignificant. In short, the two parties' deficit-reduction campaigns were fakes.

What difference do deficits make? When the government's tax revenues fall short of its expenditures, it must borrow the difference. That borrowing adds to the country's total accumulated debt. As a result, next year and thereafter, government spending will have to pay interest on this year's borrowing. That means using a portion of its tax revenues in the future NOT to provide public services or help people, but instead, to pay interest on its borrowing this year.

Deficits matter because they divert tax revenues away from serving most taxpayers to enriching Washington's creditors instead. They also matter when Republicans and conservative Democrats use deficits and government debts as excuses to cut government programs they oppose.

Conservatives fear and oppose government economic interventions other than those that support and protect business interests. When most recessions hit, conservatives want tax cuts for business and little more. When major recessions hit, they want massive government bailouts of businesses. If those require deficits, the conservatives support them (they backed the Bush and Obama bailouts from 2008 to 2010). They only turn against deficits later, once business profits are restored and then demand cutting government economic interventions that benefit other than business interests.

Liberals and Keynesians usually favor government deficits during recessions. They want the government to spend not only to soften hardships during economic downturns, but also to compensate for businesses' hesitancy to invest in poor economic conditions. Otherwise, liberals fear that crises may turn people against the capitalist system and/or to extremist politics. Thus, Paul Krugman angrily urges Obama to increase rather than limit government spending and not worry about deficits. In such enthusiasms, liberals and Keynesians underestimate the real costs of deficits and who will likely have to pay for them.

The problems with these liberals' logic are many. First, if the government taxed corporations and the wealthiest individuals more, it could maintain high spending without having to incur huge deficits. One recent calculation showed that if corporations and individuals earning over $1,000,000 per year paid the same rate of taxes today as they paid in 1961, the US Treasury would collect an addition $716 billion per year. That would cut the 2011 deficit by half and likewise its interest costs. Second, consider who lends to the US government. Major creditors include the People's Republic of China, Japan, large corporations and wealthy individuals in the US and abroad. The greater our deficits, the more of everyone's taxes go to pay interest to those creditors. Third, consider the basic injustice of deficits: (1) Washington taxes corporations and the rich far less than it used to in, say, the 1960s, (2) Washington therefore runs a deficit and (3) the US Treasury then borrows from corporations and the rich the money that the government allowed them not to pay in taxes.

The bottom line: US capitalism collapsed into dependence on massive government support in 2008 and since. Beyond providing immense, open-ended guarantees for the debts of defunct banks, insurance companies etc., government support to business included trillions spent on bank and corporate bailouts. The government chose to pay for most of that by massive borrowing (rather than raising taxes on corporations and the rich - not even on those corporations that government funds saved from certain bankruptcy). That is why those huge bailouts required correspondingly huge deficits.

On April 13, Obama suggested a small tax increase on rich individuals (raising the top bracket from 35 to 39 percent compared to the 91 percent it was in the 1960s) and an end to certain corporate tax loopholes. If ever enacted into law, those suggestions together would not change much. They would yield less than $100 billion per year. That would cut this year's deficit, for example, by a mere 7.5 percent. Moreover, more "historic compromises" with Republicans will only further reduce (or eliminate) even these modest tax burdens on corporations and the rich.

Both parties in Washington have supported and sustained massive ongoing deficits supporting a crippled, state-dependent capitalism. Those deficits will continue to raise our national debt and continue to be used as excuses for cutting government services to people. Fake debates around deficits should not distract us from what capitalism has demanded and obtained from both of its parties or from the urgent need to build a real opposition to them both.

Richard D. Wolff is a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and also a visiting professor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. Check out his documentary film on the current economic crisis, Capitalism Hits the Fan. Visit Wolff's Web site at www.rdwolff.com, and order a copy of his new book Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do about It.

© 2011 TruthOut.org All rights reserved.

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From http://www.CommonDreams.org ...

Published on Sunday, April 17, 2011 by Associated Press
Super Rich See Federal Taxes Drop Dramatically
by Stephen Ohlemacher

WASHINGTON – As millions of procrastinators scramble to meet Monday's tax filing deadline, ponder this: The super rich pay a lot less taxes than they did a couple of decades ago, and nearly half of U.S. households pay no income taxes at all.

The Internal Revenue Service tracks the tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992.
Over the same period, the average federal income tax rate for all taxpayers declined to 9.3 percent from 9.9 percent.

The top income tax rate is 35 percent, so how can people who make so much pay so little in taxes? The nation's tax laws are packed with breaks for people at every income level. There are breaks for having children, paying a mortgage, going to college, and even for paying other taxes. Plus, the top rate on capital gains is only 15 percent.

There are so many breaks that 45 percent of U.S. households will pay no federal income tax for 2010, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

"It's the fact that we are using the tax code both to collect revenue, which is its primary purpose, and to deliver these spending benefits that we run into the situation where so many people are paying no taxes," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the center, which generated the estimate of people who pay no income taxes.

The sheer volume of credits, deductions and exemptions has both Democrats and Republicans calling for tax laws to be overhauled. House Republicans want to eliminate breaks to pay for lower overall rates, reducing the top tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. Republicans oppose raising taxes, but they argue that a more efficient tax code would increase economic activity, generating additional tax revenue.

President Barack Obama said last week he wants to do away with tax breaks to lower the rates and to reduce government borrowing. Obama's proposal would result in $1 trillion in tax increases over the next 12 years. Neither proposal included many details, putting off hard choices about which tax breaks to eliminate.

In all, the tax code is filled with a total of $1.1 trillion in credits, deductions and exemptions, an average of about $8,000 per taxpayer, according to an analysis by the National Taxpayer Advocate, an independent watchdog within the IRS.

More than half of the nation's tax revenue came from the top 10 percent of earners in 2007. More than 44 percent came from the top 5 percent. Still, the wealthy have access to much more lucrative tax breaks than people with lower incomes.

Obama wants the wealthy to pay so "the amount of taxes you pay isn't determined by what kind of accountant you can afford."

Eric Schoenberg says to sign him up for paying higher taxes. Schoenberg, who inherited money and has a healthy portfolio from his days as an investment banker, has joined a group of other wealthy Americans called United for a Fair Economy. Their goal: Raise taxes on rich people like themselves.

Shoenberg, who now teaches a business class at Columbia University, said his income is usually "north of half a million a year." But 2009 was a bad year for investments, so his income dropped to a little over $200,000. His federal income tax bill was a little more than $2,000.

"I simply point out to people, `Do you think this is reasonable, that somebody in my circumstances should only be paying 1 percent of their income in tax?'" Schoenberg said.

Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said he has a solution for rich people who want to pay more in taxes: Write a check to the IRS. There's nothing stopping you.

"There's still time before the filing deadline for them to give Uncle Sam some more money," Hatch said.
Schoenberg said Hatch's suggestion misses the point.

"This voluntary idea clearly represents a mindset that basically pretends there's no such things as collective goods that we produce," Schoenberg said. "Are you going to let people volunteer to build the road system? Are you going to let them volunteer to pay for education?"

The law is packed with tax breaks that help narrow special interests. But many of the biggest tax breaks benefit millions of American families at just about every income level, making them difficult for politicians to touch.

The vast majority of those who escape federal income taxes have low and medium incomes, and most of them pay other taxes, including Social Security and Medicare taxes, property taxes and retail sales taxes.

The share of people paying no federal income tax has dropped slightly the past two years. It was 47 percent for 2009. The main difference for 2010 was the expiration of a tax break that exempted the first $2,400 of unemployment benefits from taxation, Williams said.

In 2009, nearly 35 million taxpayers got a tax break for paying interest on their home mortgages, and nearly 36 million taxpayers took the $1,000-per-child tax credit. About 41 million households reduced their federal income taxes by deducting state and local income and sales taxes from their taxable income.

About 36 million families cut their taxes by nearly $35 billion by deducting charitable donations, and 28 million taxpayers saved a total of $24 billion because their income from Social Security and railroad pensions was untaxed.

"As a matter of policy, there would be a lot of ways to save money and actually make these things work better," said Leonard Burman, a public affairs professor at Syracuse University. "As a matter of politics, it's really, really difficult."

© 2011 Associated Press

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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/21 ...

Published on Monday, March 21, 2011

March Madness for Corporate Tax Dodgers

Top seeds in the Tax Haven Tourney: banks and power companies

by Paul Buchheit

[Paul Buchheit is a faculty member in the School for New Learning at DePaul University, author of UsAgainstGreed.org and RappingHistory.org, and the editor of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.]

The small companies and public didn't have a chance in the early rounds. Now it's down to a few formidable corporate teams, the Cheat 16:

- General Electric made $10.3 billion in 2009, but received a $1.1 billion tax rebate.

- Forbes said about Bank of America in 2010: "How did they not pay any taxes on $4.4 billion in income?"

- Oil giant Exxon made a $45 billion profit in 2009, but paid no taxes in the United States.

- Citigroup had 4 quarters of billion-dollar profits in 2010, but paid no taxes.

- Wells Fargo made $12 billion but purchased Wachovia Bank to claim a $19 billion tax credit.

- Hewlett Packard's U.S. income tax rate was 4.3% in 2008 and 2.3% in 2009.

- Verizon's 10.5% tax rate, according to Forbes, is due to its partnership with Vodafone, the primary target in UK Uncut's protests against tax evaders.

- Chevron's tax rate was 1% in 2008.

- Boeing, which just won a $30 billion contract to build 179 airborne tankers, got $124 million back from the taxpayers in 2010.

- Over the past 5 years Amazon made $3.5 billion and paid taxes at the rate of 4.3%.

- Carnival Cruise Lines paid 1% in taxes on its $11.5 billion profit over the past 5 years.

- Koch Industries is not publicly traded, so their antics are kept private. But they benefit from taxpayer subsidies in ranching and logging.

- In 2008 CorporateWatch said Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp paid "astoundingly low taxes" because of tax havens.

- Google "cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years by shifting its money around foreign countries.

- Merck, the second-largest drugmaker in the U.S., last year brought more than $9 billion from abroad without paying any U.S. tax.

- Pfizer, the largest drugmaker in the U.S., erased $10 billion in taxes with an "accounting treatment."

All the above has been documented by US Uncut Chicago members on PayUpNow.org .

Who's projected for the Final Frauding Four?

Most game-ending bailouts: Bank of America received $45 Billion in tax payer bailout funds in 2008 and 2009. In 2009 the company earned a pretax income of $4.4 billion, but claimed a $1.9 Billion tax benefit from the government.

Best Defense: Google uses a game plan called a "Double Irish Defense," which moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.

Best Offense: GE's 2010 SEC 10-K tax filing boldly states: "At December 31, 2010, $94 billion of earnings have been indefinitely reinvested outside the United States...we do not intend to repatriate these earnings.."

Most Steals: Citigroup: 427 tax haven subsidiaries

Best Trash talk: A General Electric spokeswoman: “G.E. pays many other taxes including payroll taxes on the wages of our employees, property taxes, sales and use and value added taxes."

Teams with the most reserves:
General Electric: $77 billion
Google: $24 billion
That's 2 companies holding $101 billion that could be invested in jobs.

Tax Haven Tourney Champion? GE is the Duke of Tax Avoidance.