I ALMOST NEVER AGREE WITH THIS WRITER, BUT SURPRISE! even a broken clock is right 2 x a day?
Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - 12:01 am
Good to see Council addressing abatements
I am glad to see the City Council is finally addressing the loose standards for granting tax abatements to businesses.
In the past, many of these tax incentives for businesses to create jobs have either produced very few or no jobs at all. Far too often businesses use this as nothing more than a tax loophole, leaving residents to make up the difference with higher taxes. The promise of high-earning salaries can have quite a different meaning between the employee and the employer.
The most recent tax abatement request is from Tim Pape, a former City Council person and a managing partner at the law firm Carson Boxberger. If Carson Boxberger is doing so well that they need to expand, they obviously will need to add jobs anyway. So why should they get a tax abatement for it?
This practice needs to be stopped completely. The United States having the highest corporate tax rate in the world is making a hardship on businesses, and I understand that. However, passing this off to someone else does not alleviate the problem. It only creates an extra tax burden, and it invites business fraud.
Expansion for a business should be done with a clear, concise, financially sound plan. If they need tax abatements to do this, they should be re-thinking their business plan.
RECENTLY- ALLEN COUNTY COMMISSIONER NELSON PETERS SAID SOMETHING ( LIED?) ELECTION RELATED ABOUT "WE CREATED 3000 JOBS" LAST QUARTER. SURE- IF YOU COUNT ACCOUNTING MANIPULATION/ PAPER WORK PHONEY BALONEY FIGURES MADE UP dUE TO TAX ABATeMENTS..
hes a tea party republican- so the first lie is that government creates jobs, according to his ilk.. and so on..
Ms Smyser writes "The United States having the highest corporate tax rate in the world is making a hardship on businesses... "
This is constant refrain from Republicans, who then blame the supposedly high U.S. corporate tax rate for discouraging job creation. But as has noted time and time again, while the U.S. has a high statutory corporate tax rate (meaning the rate on paper), U.S. corporations actually pay incredibly low taxes due to the ever-proliferating loopholes, credits, and deductions in the tax code and the use of overseas tax havens.
U.S. corporate taxes that were actually paid (the effective rate) fell to a 40 year low of 12.1 percent in fiscal year 2011, despite corporate profits rebounding to their pre-Great Recession heights.
Thirty corporations paid less than nothing in aggregate federal income taxes over the entire 2008-10 period. If all 30 of the companies in the study paid their full corporate rate, they would have increased U.S. Government tax revenue by more than $78 billion. These companies, whose pretax U.S. profits totaled $160 billion over the three years, included:
1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings. More striking still is the discrepancy between Exxon Mobil’s rates and those of most American breadwinners. The company’s effective rate of 17.6 percent is nearly 16 percent below the average individual federal tax rate, which according to the Congressional Budget Office was 20.4 percent as of 2007.
2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.
3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.
5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.
6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.
7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.
8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.
9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.
It wouldn't appear to me that U.S. corporations are suffering too much "hardship".
This is constant refrain from Republicans, who then blame the supposedly high U.S. corporate tax rate for discouraging job creation. But as has noted time and time again, while the U.S. has a high statutory corporate tax rate (meaning the rate on paper), U.S. corporations actually pay incredibly low taxes due to the ever-proliferating loopholes, credits, and deductions in the tax code and the use of overseas tax havens.
U.S. corporate taxes that were actually paid (the effective rate) fell to a 40 year low of 12.1 percent in fiscal year 2011, despite corporate profits rebounding to their pre-Great Recession heights.
Thirty corporations paid less than nothing in aggregate federal income taxes over the entire 2008-10 period. If all 30 of the companies in the study paid their full corporate rate, they would have increased U.S. Government tax revenue by more than $78 billion. These companies, whose pretax U.S. profits totaled $160 billion over the three years, included:
1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings. More striking still is the discrepancy between Exxon Mobil’s rates and those of most American breadwinners. The company’s effective rate of 17.6 percent is nearly 16 percent below the average individual federal tax rate, which according to the Congressional Budget Office was 20.4 percent as of 2007.
2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.
3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.
5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.
6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.
7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.
8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.
9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.
It wouldn't appear to me that U.S. corporations are suffering too much "hardship".
