Hey, Corporate America! Show Taxpayers Some Appreciation!
> By Ralph Nader
> Though corporate America insists it must file yearly income taxes just
> like everyone else, it is responsible for a sharply decreasing portion
> of federal tax dollars -- despite record profits. Despite record
> profits, corporate tax contributions to the federal budget have been
> steadily declining for fifty years and now stand at a mere 7.4% of the
> federal government income because of the loopholes they driven into our
> tax laws. The average citizen pays more than four to five times that in
> federal income tax revenues (with the single exception of payroll > taxes).
Payroll taxes are not income taxes. Payroll tax is a tax on expenditure. Income tax is a tax on the "bottom line" of an accounting statement, such as a 1040. Payroll tax is never applied at the bottom line. Thus, payroll taxes are in no way the exception.
The true exception, is for workers who live in federal territories, such as Puerto Rico - where employees do not pay federal income tax nor file
1040s - only the self-employed file the Puerto Rican 1040. Thus, in P.R. corporations pay much more in income tax than do their employees.
As expert as Mr Nader is on Yanistani corruption rampant in D.C, he should nonetheless avoid over-generalising. If he's really interested in justice, he sould point out that the geographic non-uniformity of income tax is a violation of Art.I Sec.8 of the Constitution, which calls for all excise taxes to be uniform throughout the U.S. Income tax is administered as an excise tax, or it would not be in Title 26 with all the other excise taxes. Thus, there is no reason for it to be different for civil servants in D.C.(as unsavory as they might be) such that they are taxed differently than corporate servants in P.R.
Pharmaceutical companies constantly ballyhoo their
> discoveries in advertisements. What they don't tell us is that many of
> the important nonredundant therapeutic drugs -- including most
> anticancer drugs -- were developed, in whole or in part, with taxpayer
> money and then given to them by the NIH and the Defense Department.
> Bristol-Meyers Squibb, for example, controls the rights to Taxol, an
> anticancer drug developed all the way through human clinical trials at
> the National Institutes of Health with $31 million of taxpayer moneys. >
> Pharmaceutical companies spend billions on advertisements each year.
> Perhaps they should consider a big "Thank You, Taxpayers" ad campaign
> every April 15, if only to remind them where their drug research and
> development subsidies come from.
Many are in P.R. to test their drugs on Puerto Ricans.
Mining companies often receive vast sweetheart deals from taxpayers.
> Under the 1872 Mining Act hard rock mining companies are allowed to
> purchase mining rights to public land for only $5 an acre, no matter how
> valuable the minerals on (or in) that land might be. A Canadian company
> recently mined $9 billion in gold on federal land in Nevada after using
> the Mining Act to purchase the mining rights to it for about $30,000.
> Mining companies owe the taxpayers their gratitude.
Please name names: in this case the company was Barrick.
Television broadcasters were given free license to use public airwaves
> (worth around $70 billion) by a supine Congress in 1997. They too should
> thank us. What about all those professional sports corporations that
> play and profit in taxpayer-funded stadiums and arenas? The owners and
What about the entire infrastructure & inspection costs for reasons of health, terrorism, etc at ports of entry? Free trade means that importers do not have to pay their way into the country.