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Battle Lines Being Drawn As Obama Plans To Curb Tax Avoidance
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon May 04, 2009 04:30 PM
from the getting-worse-before-they-get-better dept.
from the getting-worse-before-they-get-better dept.
theodp writes "Barack Obama has squared up for a major battle with big business, announcing a crackdown on offshore tax avoidance and evasion by US multinationals that's designed to raise $210B and make it easier for companies to create 'good jobs here at home'. Obama cited a building in the Cayman Islands where more than 18,000 US companies are housed: 'Either this is the biggest building in the world or it is the biggest tax scam in the world,' he said. 'I think the American people know which it is.' The administration says that more than a third of US foreign profits in 2003 came from Bermuda, the Netherlands and Ireland, and noted US companies paid an effective tax rate of just 2.3% on the $700bn they earned in foreign profits in 2004. Among tech companies affected by the crackdown, Microsoft joined 200 companies who signed a letter complaining that the proposed tax changes would put them at a disadvantage with their rivals, Cisco moaned that the measures 'would adversely impact our ability to invest and grow our business in the US,' and Google declined to comment for the time being."
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Ballmer Threatens To Pull Out of the US 1142 comments
theodp writes "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is threatening to move Microsoft employees offshore if Congress enacts President Obama's plans to curb tax avoidance by US corporations. 'It makes US jobs more expensive,' complained billionaire Ballmer. 'We're better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the US as opposed to keeping them inside the US.' According to 2006 reports, Microsoft transferred $16 billion in assets to secretive Dublin subsidiaries to shave billions off its US tax bill. 'Corporate tax is part of the overall advantage of doing business in Ireland,' acknowledged Ballmer in 2005. 'It would be disingenuous to say otherwise.'"
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Not a tax scam (Score:5, Funny)
Its a building of holding... Duh.
I block the Politics section for a reason (Score:5, Informative)
I block the Politics section for a reason
But Slashdot seems more and more obsessed with ramming the Politics section down everyone's throats.
First I had to block the Your Rights Online section because it morphed into Your Rights COMMA On-Line.
Then Science, because Slashdot turned it into a Creationists/Stem Cell debate section
Now, 3 stories in the last few weeks have leaked out of Politics (where they rightly belong) and on to the front page/News
Dear Self-Important Editors:
You (yeah you) created sections and the ability to block sections for a reason.
Maybe you should show some self-restraint and put you Damn Fucking soap boxes back in their proper sections.
I and many others have no desire to be subjected to stories, the main point of which seems to be running screeds on how "Jews control the GOP" or how "Ron Paul was right".
Your inability to observe the standards of conduct you yourself created shows an utter lack of class.
Parent
Re:Not a tax scam (Score:5, Funny)
Whoa!! I just figured out why we don't have bags of holding.
Because we are all trapped in one!!!
AHhhhhhhhh.....
Parent
Re:Not a tax scam (Score:5, Insightful)
And actually, the evil businesses he is targeting are not cheats. They followed the law to the letter. Blame congress for leaving the loop holes.
Tim Geithner, Tom Daschle, Nancy Killefer, and Hilda Solis are tax cheats. The law was clear, but they were too important to follow it.
Parent
Re:Not a tax scam (Score:5, Insightful)
Well the point is that he plans to close those loopholes. But generally speaking, when you use a loophole to get around a rule, you're behaving unethically. I think it's reasonable to be upset at the businesses for that.
Parent
Re:Not a tax scam (Score:5, Insightful)
Well gee, maybe the hundreds of employees who work, eat, and live near these headquarters.
Assuming of course that at least some of them pay taxes...
Parent
Re:Not a tax scam (Score:5, Informative)
And guess who winds up paying for the taxes companies pay? Yep, the people that buy the products. Taxing a company is still taxing the people, just adding another layer onto taxation.
That's not to say corporate income shouldn't be taxed; that may be the most efficient means to collect the needed revenue. But let's not kid ourselves by thinking that taxing companies means the "evil rich" will be paying taxes instead of "the common people".
Parent
Corporations (Score:5, Interesting)
The plus here is that corporations are the ones that are going to f*ck themselves over. You see they need, and I mean NEED, the government. Yes, the same ebil gubbermint they complain about. China isn't exactly a haven for Intellectual Property (i.e. rampant theft), other countries can't project power to defend the corporations various holdings, other countries lack the legal mechanisms for corporate defense, et al. That's why corporations raise the hew and cry often, but do very little but lobby.
The right keeps using the words "Socialist", "Marxist", and "Fascist" to describe Obama. Those words do not mean what they mean think they mean. I mean, really, Obama is a _______ (fill in the blank)? Obviously the right has ZERO idea of how center-right Obama really is. Heck, in any "Socialist" country, Obama would be seen as a right-winger. Fascist? Yeah, right, let me know what the previous President's wonderful record on the Bill of Rights was, in particular the 4th amendment. Marxist? Puh-lease, let me know when Obama pulls a Reagan and sends troops in somewhere over a labor dispute.
Just goes to show you what a lack of perspective nets people.
End all tax "credits" and "exemptions" (including EITC and Mortgage tax credits) and government handouts to corporations. After 5 years of paying off debt, lower the marginal rate. Remember, no exemptions at all. This would sting at first, in fact it would have to be phased in, but then the country would have a tax system that is as "fair" as taxes can be.
Parent
Re:Not a tax scam (Score:5, Informative)
There are two main factors that make Delaware a popular jurisdiction for incorporation. First, there's no corporate income tax for revenues that are made outside of Delaware, and the other is that Delaware's laws make it very difficult to pierce the corporate veil in litigation.
Several other states are trying to follow suit. Nevada's a fairly popular one, too.
-jcr
Parent
Re:Not a tax scam (Score:5, Funny)
They did actually and they did find a mistake. I am now $1k richer for it.
Parent
two ways to solve the tax "scam" (Score:5, Insightful)
two ways to solve the tax "scam"
1. raise overseas tax
2. lower domestic tax
guess which road the government takes.
Re:two ways to solve the tax "scam" (Score:5, Insightful)
Do both
Parent
Re:two ways to solve the tax "scam" (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there some compelling reason to tax corporate profits?
The reason to tax corporations is to misdirect the public from realizing what their tax burden actually is. Corporations don't pay taxes, they only collect them. People pay taxes.
-jcr
Parent
Re:two ways to solve the tax "scam" (Score:5, Insightful)
While true, that's an overly simplified view of what is being taxed, and how taxes play out economically. In essence, it's a straw man -- it diverts from the question of what activity is actually being taxed (and thus what activity is being inhibited by the tax).
In the end, there are only four types of taxes: taxes on labor, taxes on capital, taxes on imports, and taxes on consumption.
Each type of tax has different impacts on the economy, although their effects overlap in a lot of ways. Corporate taxes are a tax on profitable capital investment. While the tax is in the end born by everyone, those it impacts the most are capital investors. This is very different from a tax on labor (income tax) or a tax on consumption (sales tax).
I don't buy into a lot of the class warfare concepts; however, I do believe that assigning tax heavily on labor is a bad idea. I personally don't cherish the idea of a permanent underclass -- and it's getting ever harder for someone who earns primarily from labor to climb into the ranks of those who earn primarily from capital gains, save via tax-sheltered investment plans like 401ks or Roth IRAs.
Parent
Re:two ways to solve the tax "scam" (Score:5, Insightful)
So the question is, what are the things that we can tax and minimize the negative impact on the economy?
Since I believe trickle-down economics has been shown to not work, I believe taxes levied on capital investment are a good bet. One can increase capital investment to increase income. There is a limit to how much a person can increase labor to increase income.
Parent
Re:two ways to solve the tax "scam" (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks in advance.
Parent
Re:two ways to solve the tax "scam" (Score:5, Funny)
By not pissing away money on other things.
That's right -- eternal war should be America's first priority! Show me a legitimate "other thing" and I'll show you a traitor to the homeland.
Parent
Re:two ways to solve the tax "scam" (Score:5, Insightful)
Business taxes are just indirect taxes on people. Consumers pay more for goods, investors receive fewer dividends or the value of their shares decreases, and employees receive lower wages and have fewer job opportunities.
Yeah, it is funny how the price of everything went down when corporate tax cuts were given. Oh wait, they stayed the same. If we actually start collecting corporate income taxes, I'm betting what will happen is that the companies will earn somewhat less net profit, and continue charging whatever the market will bear like they always do.
Businesses do not set prices at (cost to produce) * (1 + modest profit ratio). They set prices to maximize revenue by maximizing price times expected sales at that price. If that's less than it costs to produce, then they find another business, if it's more, even a lot more, then yee-ha! When their costs go down, they only tell you they're "passing the savings on to you!" when they think they can get more money by undercutting others. When their costs go up, they might like to charge more, but if that means fewer people will buy and they end up with less money, they suck it up and go on at the current prices.
Unless I'm mistaken, it's mostly income taxes that are at issue with foreign tax havens anyway, which are based on profit and shouldn't push a company from black to red. On the other hand if things like payroll taxes on U.S. employees increase, that's more incentive for them to outsource, not that they really need any more. Outsourcing is a bucket of worms to be sure, since just about anything you do to try to stop it just encourages it, and doing nothing means it's happening rapidly regardless.
Either way, don't expect the price of your next Dell to go up 12.4% because their tax rate did too. It just doesn't work that way.
Parent
Re:two ways to solve the tax "scam" (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's another option:
Require companies to generate ONE set of financial statements each year, not two.
At present, companies create one set of financial statements for shareholders (showing big profits) and one statement for the IRS (showing little or no profits). A simple law that forbids this two-faced scheme would do a great deal to bring companies in line.
Parent
Re:two ways to solve the tax "scam" (Score:5, Insightful)
Usually when the government lowers taxes they see an increase in tax revenue because of increased spending since taxes are lower. Instead of easing penalties or adding incentives to do business in the US, the administration has instead elected to add more penalties. Two guesses how that will turn out.... Not like it hasn't been tried before.
Parent
Where is the crossing line for lowering tax rates? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not the case that "usually" lowing taxes increases revenue. It hasn't seemed to work too well for the last several rounds of tax cuts. Certainly there is a point where lowering taxes reduces total revenue. That point is a tax rate somewhere between 0 and 100%; where? That's up for debate.
Many economists would argue we passed that point some time ago.
SirWired
Parent
Re:Where is the crossing line for lowering tax rat (Score:5, Interesting)
Inherent in that argument is that maximizing revenue is desirable for the government. Perhaps that is true in a time of war, but government is not a business, minimization, not maximization should be it's goal imo.
Parent
Re:Where is the crossing line for lowering tax rat (Score:5, Informative)
One: The Congressional Budget Office issued a report to that effect in 2005 (when the US federal government was entirely Republican-run). http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/69xx/doc6908/12-01-10PercentTaxCut.pdf [cbo.gov]
Two: Nobel prize laureate James Tobin, for another. In 1992 he wrote that "[t]he 'Laffer Curve' idea that tax cuts would actually increase revenues turned out to deserve the ridicule with which sober economists had greeted it in 1981."
And three, economist Paul Pecorino calculated in 1995 that peak revenue was generated at a tax rate of around 65%, much higher than current tax rates in the US.
Parent
Re:Where is the crossing line for lowering tax rat (Score:5, Insightful)
I dispute the premise that maximizing tax revenue is a legitimate function of government.
Parent
Re:two ways to solve the tax "scam" (Score:5, Insightful)
These are, in my view, important questions that need to be debated, research and argued for and against with reason, reflection and as far as possible with a comprehensive and broad study of the many many factors involved. Hopefully one would eventually end up with a policy based in reason that reflected practical reality and not dogmatic ideology.
Usually when the government lowers taxes they see an increase in tax revenue because of increased spending since taxes are lower.
Hard for me to evaluate this but I would be surprised if it was quite that simple. The economy is complex and there are many factors involved in levels that might not be immediately obvious. Of course if you provided links and information about in which period you are referring to we could perhaps evaluate further and speculate to whether or not the lowered tax was the ONLY contributing factor to increased revenue.
The goal, again in my view, should be to arrive at a tax, budget and economic policy that allowed the state to do all the things that are necessary (fire, police, roads, and other institutions depending on what you believe the Government should, or could, run or regulate); while providing the greatest amount of freedom for the individual. Though in this particular case I see only a Head of State trying to push for enforcing the laws and regulations that are already present. And to make it harder to avoid paying the existing taxes by finding loopholes. Debating about whether or not those taxes and regulations are fair is another issue entirely; but one, as I state above, is important no doubt about that. However anyone trying to excuse their criminal or unethical behaviour by saying "The law isn't fair!" can join the rest of the prison population; or actually try to use the democratic means available to argue for changing those laws. In this case "the corporations in question" are just a whining bunch of cry babies who believe they should be allowed to do what they wish disregarding what the laws of their own nation says.
Parent
Re:two ways to solve the tax "scam" (Score:5, Informative)
Usually when the government lowers taxes they see an increase in tax revenue because of increased spending since taxes are lower
No. This is the often-marketed Supply Side tax cut effect that is, as shown here, incorrect.
The correct statement is that a cut in taxes does not reduce tax revenues dollar for dollar. This is also over the long-term, like 30+ years. For instance, the Kennedy era tax cuts eventually reduced tax revenue by 70% of expected receipt.
While I do not have direct citations back this up, it has been the recent trend that the sellers of Supply Side Tax cuts to the Republican party have had to claw back the extreme claims. I think Bruce Bartlett has spent recent history setting the record straight. You can also find more information among Krugman's public articles.
Parent
Re:two ways to solve the tax "scam" (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they don't see a benefit in proportion to the amount of taxes they're being forced to pay. I certainly don't.
Also, we have a lot of unemployed people. We want companies to do more business and make more money so they can hire people. You think penalizing them and taking money from them is going to help with that?
Corporate Executive: I wonder if I should invest in the USA, where the people hate us, the government really hates us, and they want to take our money? Hmm. No. I should try to grow the business in a more friendly country. Or maybe I'll just take my money and retire early. I hear Costa Rica is nice.
Parent
Wont increase taxes on middle class (Score:5, Insightful)
What does he think is going to happen? These evil rich businessmen are going to go out and deliver pizzas in their free time to pay the extra taxes? Corporate taxes are exactly the same as raising income tax, except you are paying at the point of purchase rather then the point of earning. The only real point of corporate taxes is to give the government the ability to punish companies that fall out of favor.
Re:Wont increase taxes on middle class (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm tired of seeing people duped into clamoring for corporate taxes as though they'll somehow benefit from it. Can we replace everything on TV with basic economic and political education for a month? People need figure stuff like this out. Politicians drag out the same tired tricks over and over and the sheeple eat it up like it's free candy.
Parent
Re:Wont increase taxes on middle class (Score:5, Insightful)
You're really going to defend tax cheats? They make a ton of money from US customers and they live in the US but they don't have to pay there fair share of taxes?
It all makes sense after reading your sig...
You don't know anything about socialism or fascism. If you really believe your own line then you would be calling pretty much all of Europe fascists. I'm not sure anyone else is really going to agree with you other than other whackjobs.
Parent
Re:Wont increase taxes on middle class (Score:5, Insightful)
If corporations paid their fair share
You seem to have missed my entire point. Corporations do not pay taxes, at all! If we impose a 75% tax on every corporation and eliminate all loopholes and tax havens, corporations still won't pay a cent in taxes. All wealth is held by individuals. When a corporation is taxed, you and I pay that tax when we buy their products. I don't know how to make this more simple. If only they'd teach economics in school these days, maybe people wouldn't be so easily duped.
When you argue for higher taxes on corporations, you're actually arguing for higher taxes on yourself. Think about it for a few minutes. It may feel like social justice to raise taxes on a mega-corporation, but your emotions are wrong. No matter what they call it, the money always comes out of the same pocket: the individual American taxpayer.
Parent
Re:Wont increase taxes on middle class (Score:5, Insightful)
You make 2 flawed assumptions
1) consumers will be willing to pay more
2) price is in related to production cost.
There are few markets where these are true, generally price is the optimum price for making money from customer ( ~= the most most customers will pay).
Parent
Re:Wont increase taxes on middle class (Score:5, Insightful)
What is proposed clearly is not the same as raising personal income taxes for several reasons, three of the most significant of which are:
1) Increasing corporate income taxes is not equivalent to raising personal income taxes in general. Even assuming, for the sake of argument (at least till we get to the next item), that raising corporate income taxes had exactly the same effect as raising personal income taxes on the income earned by employees of those corporations, not all personal income comes from employment in entities that pay corporate income taxes since people are employed by tax exempt nonprofits (whose income isn't taxed at all), sole proprietorships, certain classes of partnerships, and S corporations (whose income is subject to personal, not corporate, taxes), and federal, state, and local governments.
2) Increasing corporate income taxes isn't even equivalent to raising personal income taxes on the employees of the taxed corporations. This equivalency would require the assumption that corporations are paying wages that are above what the market will bear by at least an amount sufficient to cut wages by the exact proportion of the increase in corporate taxes. This assumption is clearly flawed.
3) Narrowing the opportunities for one form of tax avoidance is not the same as raising marginal rates for the same tax. Making it harder for corporations to avoid certain taxes using mechanisms some (but far from all, or even the majority) have chosen to utilize is not the same raising the rate of corporate taxation, since it has no effect on those entities subject to corporate tax that have not chosen to avoid taxes using the mechanism being attacked. It only negatively impacts those entities currently using the particular tax avoidance measure, not corporations in general.
Parent
oh no (Score:5, Funny)
Not my free market! Take your hands off my free market Nobama!
Oops we're bankrupt, give us money Mr. President :(
Am I cynical? (Score:5, Informative)
Am I cynical to think that these businesses will just raise the cost of their goods to cover the additional tax, thus making consumers the ones to pick up this $210 billion tab? I somehow doubt that publicly traded companies are excited to see the earnings hit show up in their quarterly statements.
Re:Am I cynical? (Score:5, Funny)
Nope, they're going to pick up paper routes to make up for the difference.
Parent
Re:Am I cynical? (Score:5, Insightful)
They'll have to. Their business model depends on being able to "compete" with lower prices by cheating on their taxes. Money which could have been used to keep your children healthy, or educate them, or yes, even fight terrorism. What's worse, they did it so much that now the apparently depend on it.
If you can't make a profit playing by the rules then stop trying to make a profit and die. That's how the system is supposed to work, isn't it? (Whether or not that's a dumb idea is an entirely different debate...)
Parent
Market rules work for countries, too (Score:5, Insightful)
This is more or less what's happenning to the USA as a whole. American companies simply cannot compete against foreign companies, that's why the industrial sector is moving to Asia. It's useless to say "stop trying to make a profit and die", they died a quarter century ago [msn.com].
It's the US government at all levels, federal, state, and local, that should learn to live by the rules. When the corporations are moving overseas to places with lower taxes this means your taxes are too high, you should cut government spending and taxes at the same time.
Parent
Re:Am I cynical? (Score:5, Informative)
They'll try. They'll be faced with the other side of the equation, though: as prices go up, demand drops. So they'll have to decide how much they can afford to lose in sales.
To me it only seems fair. As a private citizen I don't get out of paying taxes just because my income was outside the US. I have to file and pay taxes on that income, the only thing I get is a credit against US taxes due for the amount of taxes I paid on that income in that foreign country. The corporations are mad because they had a sweet deal going: don't pay US taxes on foreign income, and make a deal to avoid paying foreign taxes on that same income because they're a US company bringing all those jobs to the foreign country. And now Obama's looking to ruin their nice little sweetheart deal.
Parent
Go Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, every time Obama does something wrong, we see a bunch of people making sarcastic comments here on how Obama represents "change we can believe in". I do not agree with everything he has done, but I do like to see this sort of thing, he seems like he is honestly trying to run the government in a fiscally responsible way. That's a big difference from our previous president who refused to cut spending to pay for his tax cuts, and even refused to allow the cost of his several hundred billion dollar unnecessary war to be included in the normal budget. We're all paying for that kind of "limited government" now, as will be our children and grandchildren.
And of course we can expect the legislation to.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And of course we can expect this to work flawlessly, and won't make businesses avoid the US, just like other great laws such as SOX.
How about lowering taxes and making the tax code simpler, so theres not all these loopholes and thus no reason to have the offshort accounts.
Complicated tax codes create the loopholes that allow this to happen, and this legislation will only make more of them.
Re:And of course we can expect the legislation to. (Score:5, Insightful)
The race to lower taxes is a race straight to the bottom. Businesses will continue to use tax havens as long as there is any benefit to doing so, and the simple fact is that a big economy like the USA cannot afford to lower tax rates to what a little place like the Cayman Islands can charge, e.g. basically nothing.
A better solution is to change conflict laws to ignore the formal jurisdiction of incorporation and instead use the primary place of business. Want to be a Cayman corporation? Then move your ass to the Cayman Islands, along with your entire family. Otherwise, you will be taxed based on where your company really is headquartered. This is something that the major economies of the world can cooperate to make happen, and we don't have to drop our taxes into the toilet to do it.
Parent
Re:And of course we can expect the legislation to. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up. People who want to raise taxes on evil "big business" seem to not understand that the end result is that those evil "big businesses" will have to fire people or increase their prices to remain competitive successful.
Big businesses employ big numbers of people. This concept is lost on most Democrats and populists that scapegoat big corporations. You can't just blame big companies for everything and expect that they'll ignore this and carry on!
Here in Wisconsin we are looking at a number of laws that will substantially increase taxes on corporations doing business in the state. As a direct result of the anti-business climate in the state, a number of businesses have either relocated operations that were in Wisconsin or actively decided to decline to locate their headquarters in the state -- for example, our famous Miller Brewing Company, formerly headquartered in Milwaukee, merged with Coors of Denver and decided to relocate their headquarters to Chicago.
Parent
*WOOSH* (Score:5, Interesting)
Congratulations on missing the point congress. (surprise)
Forbes had a great piece on this a few months ago. People aren't going to Ireland / the Caymans because they don't want to pay taxes and just want to cheat... the cost of compliance is too high.
One of the good things Regan was supposed to have done was get lots of tax money back to the US by simplifying our tax code. Even though they may have brought their money back from countries with lower tax burdens, it was easier to have it in the US.
There is an opportunity cost to moving your money to another country or using a tax shelter (legal or not). People judge it worth it because of what they have to go through.
If you simply simplify the tax code so it's not so hard to deal with, people will come back. Things have only gotten worse recently with SarbOx. Closing loopholes is trying to tie the arms of suicidal people to beds. It works much better to try to get them to stop being suicidal.
There will always be people who try to cheat the system because they are immoral jerks. But if it doesn't take wealthy people a team of 30 tax attorneys to keep their wealth in line, they're more likely to keep it in the US and avoid the hassle of all the international laws (and spending 183 days of the year out of the country, and blah blah blah). No tax breaks for pork farmers on 17-35 acres in areas that don't observe daylight savings time unless they grow at least 3% barley ethanol using sustainable methods.
The problem is complexity in the tax code, not tax shelters.
Example [amazon.com] way to fix things.
Re:w00t! (Score:5, Informative)
You know the EU-Commissioner for financial regulation is Irish, he was the architect of the Irish tax evasion wonder for high tech companies.
When you buy software from Microsoft in Europe it comes from MIOL (Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited). Ireland is a gigantic tax evasion scam for American software companies which drain European markets including government customers without contributions to our social welfare states.
As one Hungarian said to Ballmer: Give us our money back!
Parent
Re:w00t! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why blame Ballmer and Microsoft?
Ireland offers these companies a way to pay less in tax. You really expect them to not take it?
Ireland sees it as a way to increase their income so they do it. If you want to blame anybody then blame Ireland and or the EU in general.
Hey I am not a fan of Microsoft but in this case the blame seems really misplaces.
Of course you could just stop buying Windows.
You have Linux, BSD, and even Solaris now to choose from and build a local software industry around or you can keep buying Windows and pumping money out of your country. Windows is probably the path of least resistance... Kind of like going through Ireland for software sales.
Parent
Re:w00t! (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't have to "earn" the right to be treated like a human being and a member of society. It's a duty of everyone to help with that.
Parent
Re:Easy solution for multinationals: move HQ (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of those Bermuda/Cayman holding companies exist not to avoid taxes entirely, but rather to keep the US from double-taxing profits that have already been taxed once by Europe/Asia, which is what the US does when this offshore trick isn't used.
This is bogus argument. US has tax treaties with most of the rest of the world that prevent double taxation
It seems likely to me that if US companies can't do that any longer, many will cease to be US companies. It's not that hard to move HQ to Ireland or Canada or wherever. Then the US can become a nation of grunt workers while the real power and intellect (and taxable personal income) is abroad.
And where will they go exactly to find regulations and tax system that is more friendly to corporation than US? Canada? Really!?
EU is cracking on tax heavens too and Ireland will not enjoy it's special status much longer.
Parent
Re:You mean they'll actually have to pay.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you people possibly be this naive?
Where exactly do you think the businesses are going to come up with the extra money? Unlike the U.S. government, they can't just print more of it. No, they'll raise prices, lower dividends, lower wages, and offer fewer jobs. FEWER JOBS. Does this sound like a good idea?
You're still paying for all those government services "the businesses" are using up, just indirectly. You fell for it! Bravo.
Parent
Totally man! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you keep insisting that corporations don't deserve all of their tax breaks and special treatment by the government, the really greedy ones may be put out of business. Then, the network of Fortune 1000 CEOs might make less money, and they might have to actually work, or not even receive hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses when their businesses are failing.
This may lead to the end of large, bureaucratic, inefficient mega corporations which exploit people and resources for short term profit, using monopoly tactics and sleazy practices like bribing politicians or using tax havens or ripping off their customers. You might end up with unions, four week vacations, the right to health care, and a lower poverty rate!
You fell for it! Bravo, douchebag.
Parent