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Why You Pay Too Much In Taxes
Illegal Aliens Scam Tax Refunds
For years, American taxpayers have been shelling out $4.2 billion dollars per year to pay for a scam.
A report by the Inspector General found that some 2 million illegal immigrants have been receiving large tax refunds by pretending that numerous dependents live with them ... when, in fact, most of the dependents live in Mexico and have never lived in the United States.
Once whistleblowers called attention to this problem, their IRS bosses told them to ignore the fraud and look the other way:
WND notes:
The problem was not a revelation to the Northern California IRS field-office worker who viewed the report: “The fraud has been going on for years,” he told WND. “Business as usual.”
“As the video indicates the Service does nothing,” he said, asking WND not use his name to avoid reprisal.
(The Federal Reserve has been bailing out foreign banks for years; but we assume that this is not a backdoor bailout for foreign nationals.)
Giant Corporations Scam Tax Refunds
Pulitzer prize winning reporter David Cay Johnston reports that - in 16 states - giant companies pocket your "state income taxes".
This includes foreign corporations.
Workers are never informed that their "state income taxes" are being pocketed. And states often refuse to make this information public, claiming that it is "proprietary information".
In addition, big companies use a variety of international scams to avoid taxes:
The Washington Post notes:
About two-thirds of corporations operating in the United States did not pay taxes annually from 1998 to 2005, according to a new report scheduled to be made public today from the U.S. Government Accountability Office…
In 2005, about 28 percent of large corporations paid no taxes…
Dorgan and Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) requested the report out of concern that some corporations were using “transfer pricing” to reduce their tax bills. The practice allows multi-national companies to transfer goods and assets between internal divisions so they can record income in a jurisdiction with low tax rates…
[Senator] Levin said: “This report makes clear that too many corporations are using tax trickery to send their profits overseas and avoid paying their fair share in the United States.”
Indeed, as ... Johnston documents, American multinationals pay much less in taxes than they should because they use a widespread variety of tax-avoidance scams and schemes, including:
- Selling valuable assets of the American companies to foreign subsidiaries based in tax havens for next to nothing, so that those valuable assets can be taxed at much lower foreign rates
- Pretending that costs were spent in the United States, so that the companies can count them as costs or deductions in the U.S. and pay less taxes to the American government
- Booking profits as if they occurred in the subsidiary’s tax haven countries, so that taxes paid on profits are at the much lower safe haven rate
- Working out sweetheart deals with certain foreign governments, so that the companies can pretend they paid more in foreign taxes than they actually did, to obtain higher U.S. tax credits than are warranted
- Pretending they are headquartered in tax havens like Bermuda, the Cayman Islands or Panama, so that they can enjoy all of the benefits of actually being based in America (including the use of American law and the court system, listing on the Dow, etc.), with the tax benefits associated with having a principal address in a sunny tax haven.
- And myriad other scams
Indeed, some of the world's biggest companies not only dodge all taxes, they actually enjoy a negative tax rate ... where they are paid money by the U.S. government, just like the illegal immigrants discussed above.
The World's Richest Hide $31 Trillion Dollars to Avoid Taxes
A new report from the former chief economist at the prestigious McKinsey firm - an expert on tax havens - concludes that
The Guardian notes:
A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together ....
James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer.
He shows that at least £13tn – perhaps up to £20tn [i.e. $31 trillion dollars] – has leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. Their wealth is, as Henry puts it, "protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy".
***
The detailed analysis in the report, compiled using data from a range of sources, including the Bank of International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund, suggests that for many developing countries the cumulative value of the capital that has flowed out of their economies since the 1970s would be more than enough to pay off their debts to the rest of the world.
***
"The problem here is that the assets of these countries are held by a small number of wealthy individuals while the debts are shouldered by the ordinary people of these countries through their governments," the report says.
The sheer size of the cash pile sitting out of reach of tax authorities is so great that it suggests standard measures of inequality radically underestimate the true gap between rich and poor. According to Henry's calculations, £6.3tn of assets is owned by only 92,000 people, or 0.001% of the world's population – a tiny class of the mega-rich who have more in common with each other than those at the bottom of the income scale in their own societies.
"These estimates reveal a staggering failure: inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people," said John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network. "People on the street have no illusions about how unfair the situation has become." [Remember that rampant inequality destroys economies. And conservatives or liberals are both offended by it.]
Al Jazeera reports:
Rich individuals and their families have as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial assets in offshore tax havens, representing up to $280bn in lost income tax revenues, according to research published on Sunday.
The study estimating the extent of global private financial wealth held in offshore accounts - excluding non-financial assets such as real estate, gold, yachts and racehorses - puts the sum at between $21 and $32 trillion.
***
John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network told Al Jazeera that he was shocked by "the sheer scale of the figures".
"What's shocking is that some of the world's biggest banks are up to their eyeballs in helping their clients evade taxes and shift their wealth offshore," said Christensen.
"We're talking about very big, well-known brands - HSBC, Citigroup, Bank of America, UBS, Credit Suisse - some of the world's biggest banks are involved... and they do it knowing fully well that their clients, more often than not, are evading and avoiding taxes."
Much of this activity, Christensen added, was illegal.
***
The research estimates that since the 1970s, the richest citizens of these 139 countries had amassed $7.3 to $9.3 trillion of "unrecorded offshore wealth" by 2010.
Private wealth held offshore represents "a huge black hole in the world economy," Henry said in a statement.
Either Eliminate Taxes - Or Tax Fairly - But Don't Allow Fraud to Rob the Middle Class Blind
Some say that we could eliminate all taxes if we take away from the big banks the monopoly power to create credit, so that the government doesn't have to pay trillions on interest for that credit.
Some say that income taxes are illegal, because they were never ratified by the states.
Some say that - since more than half of all government discretionary spending goes to imperial wars of adventure and most of the rest is thrown at the big banks so they can keep ripping us off - paying taxes is just propping up a destructive system.
Others - including some leading conservatives - say that the problem is that the wealthiest haven't been forced to pay their fair share of taxes. let off too easy.
We're not weighing in one way or the other. But one thing is for sure: either no one should pay taxes, or we should all - illegal immigrants, giant corporations and the super-rich - be subject to the same rules and pay our fair share.
Soaking the middle class is unfair, unjust and unAmerican. Indeed, while the Boston Tea Party was a revolt against taxation without representation, it largely centered on the British government’s disproportionate tax breaks – towards the East India Company, the giant company which dominated the tea market and hurt small American business.
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srydstoopid, work for the BLS do you..they have all kinds of data that they claim is valid while us anecdotal morons see empty stores, closed business, and hopeless souls filling the charity doorways. but heck you are right if some genius does not put up charts and such your own eyes are never valid..keep going thru this world with your eyes wide shut.
Thomson Reuters uses their tiny Swiss affiliate to "own" 100% of the IP produced within the company no matter where the work is/was performed. I'm not sure if it is for tax avoidance reasons, but it always seemed odd to me that the only practice that was strictly enforced was the placement of the correct copyright information at the head of every file. I'm sure it relates to some IP or tax-avoidance scheme somehow.
Why not copy the Swiss tax system, it seems to be working for them.
This has been going on for decades now. Makes you wonder, what the heck are they doing up on the hill except rubber stamping give aways? Shit everywhere riddled with loopholes, swiss cheese like, but they spend all the energy on abortions, gays and which brand of God is best. Our own dumb people keep voting the same illiterate money grabbing bastards in. Better stop before I get really unladylike, you guys do a WAY better job of swearing like sailors, always a joy to read, puts me in a better mood, almost cathartic.
+4389573984
The offshore $$ are the big ticket item. When you strip away all the BS, the economy is fucked because the super-rich took everything. You have to consider clawing it back with taxes, since you cannot do it with wages.
Might as well have the taxation discussion, because everyone making over $100K ($60K?) will be paying more income taxes next year.
Let me re-phrase your aregument to make it more clear: You think we should take from the rich and give to everyone else.
We should at least make the system transparent, so everyone knows who is scamming who.
See my little Douche-Muffin.
It's just jealousy, see us po' folk can't afford to hide any of our cash in foreign places we've never seen or in most cases even heard about. But we hear that trillions and trillions of dollars owned by the Rich folk are untaxed, while we go to jail if we fail to pay $1.00 of taxes due. See my Douche-Muffin freind, it's an issue of fairness which is why po' folk like me are jealous.
Either we don't pay any taxes at all on our pathetic incomes , without having to zip our non-existent money to foreign entities, or the rich go to jail for not paying taxes on their hidden trillions. Also, it would be nice if the state govts stopped allowing the corporations to deduct our tax money from our dinky tiny little pay checks and just keep it. We don't mind paying our dinky tiny share, but we do mind if we have to rebate our own wages to our employers and then get thrown into jail for not paying any federal taxes like on our eBay earnings when we sell stuff to make ends meet after paying 10% to eBay and 3% to Paypal and know they offshore their earnings too.
It's just good ol fashioned Jealousy. It's the same damn thing as when we go to jail for stealing a candy bar and the folks on Wall Street do no jail time when they steal us blind.
as opposed to the rich just taking from everyone else?
How about if the rich and the poor eat one another?
The point of offshore is anonymity and a fundamental mistrust of the government. Read up on the Roosevelt gold act.
When you strip away the BS, you will realize that if you do away with the "tax h(e)avens" the tax hell will be virtually guaranteed, as in a flat 30-50% tax on all your liquid assets, levied whenever they feel like, mandatory purchase of sovereign debt yielding token interest, forced investment in government projects, you name it, they will do it. And it will include you.
And if you are not able to protect what you make, why bother. Just hold your hand out and demand a benefit, after all that's were most of the tax revenues are going anyway.
No doubt some people that have off-shore acounts distrust the government. Some of them run the government. Some of them run the scams that have destroyed the middle class in this country.
If you want your money in a tax-free "haven", fine. Pack up your family and your business and go live there. As it is you are free riding on the labor, taxes and blood of the vast majority of Americans. Don't hide among us and wave an American flag on the fourth of July.
This sounds like one of those "If guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns"-stories.
Why?? would "the tax hell ...be virtually guaranteed, as in a flat (!!) 30-50% (oh, pick 90%!!! please! Why be shy with 30-50%??) tax on all liquid assets."
This is a totally, 100% "evidence-free" assertion that not even a one statistic would support. Hey, you forgot the best part! >>"Everyone will have a black $ on their forehead if they paid their taxes!"
"Hold out your hand and demand a benefit.."??? My, that sounds like agile thinking at its best.
Hey, I heard back in 1959, that there were 500,000 Chinese Communist Troops poised in Mexico to invade the United States. Maybe you can go down and find their encampments??
"This sounds like one of those..." Huh? who else will? You doubt the validity of the statement?
The Roosevelt gold act and subsequent devaluation of the Dollar was effectively a one off tax on capital no matter how you want to call it. Unless this is not evidence by your standards of course.
BTW, the Chinese do not need to station anyone across the Mexican border. The "progressives" in the US are doing a much better job for free.
Same in Europe. Immigrants claiming to have more children than they have. And you know what: these children did not even have to live in the country in Europe where the benefit was claimed. And when this fraud was found out, do you think they were kickec out of the country? Of course not. Thanks to the leftists.
You think that if government revenues were higher your taxes would be lower? Get fucking real, they would spend more, actually get into greater debt since the increased revenue would make the US look more credit worthy, and spend more on pet projects and reelection handouts.
And no, there would be no change for the middle class. The purpose of modern "progressive" tax systems is to maximize revenue from the private economy, and nothing else. Let's face it: Government is a bottomless pit, the rest is just populist crap. If you want lower taxes start pushing your local congresscritter for actual and meaningful spending cuts, across the board, and then lower taxes. That will also take care of the offshore centers. They live off the over taxation of the rest of the world.
The middle class had better get its act together and start giving the statist and leftist assclowns the finger at all levels, or it will perish.
Beautifully said Agent Default.
No one left to pay the taxes but the middle class and they're the ones with no jobs. If you're already on welfare it's a snap to get a job at McDonalds because they get a tax break for hiring folks on welfare. If you're not on welfare (yet) don't even bother filling out the McDonald's form.
I don't see how since all dependents need their SS# entered onto the 1040 along with their names unless the IRS systems don't crosscheck those SS#'s for actual relations to the tax payer. Maybe I should be doing that next year. Something tells me that as a white male I would be immediately flagged for audit if I tried it. Perhaps I should legally change my name to Jose Hernandez and then give it a shot.
I not 100% sure but you can have kids that aren't born in the USA that still are dependents.
PL
It can be hard to get a SSI number if your from Latin America, but there still your kid.
Popular to blame the field worker for the government shortfall.
Now, why would an extortion racket waste any effort at "cross-checking?"
Quit work, don't eat much, lose weight....
That's the Spastica Rex Diet Plan. Ask me how much I've lost... 53 lbs!
If we're gonna get taxed the shit out of us and be robbed of our retirement savings and other investments, we should at least have the decency to advertise post-tax salary as the actual salary. Why the fuck would you say you have a $100K job when you only see $65K of it!
How can someone be robbed (taxed) fairly? This all makes no sense. Are there still people who dont know that tax is a polite word for theft?
Because FAIR is actually an acronym.
Fuck All, Ignoring Reason.
You lost me at Al Jazeera
Even Obama is watching Al Jazeera.
If Al Jazerra was any more to the left, it could sneak up on Barney Frank from the front.
Then your still in the Matrix
The government is running a deficit of 1.5 trillion dollars or so a year. Unless you can make the case that in total tax avoiders are avoiding 1.5 trillion dollars or so of taxes a year, then you can't make the case that the middle class is paying too much in taxes.
How 'bout I point out the rather obvious fact that the vast majority of that $1.5T ends up in the hands of the people dodging the taxes?
How many of the corporations that paid zero taxes were health insurance companies collecting Medicare and SS dollars?
Grow a motherfucking brain or shut the fuck up.
By hands of people dogging taxes you mean foreign wars right?
Charlie, is that you?
You're an idiot
Go fuck yourself
The whole system is stupid.
"For years, American taxpayers have been shelling out $4.2 billion dollars per year to pay for a scam."
Buddy, That scam is known as The US Government and it's way more than 4.2B!
*Gobsmacked*
yep