Cayman gets the blame now for US tax payers obtaining less refunds
How about this piece of US nonsense from a Boston, MA radio station wsbradio.
Less refund from IRS? Blame the Caymans
By Bill Caiaccio
Boston, MA — A new study shows you’re probably getting less back in your tax refund this year because of offshore bank accounts.
Researchers say the average person in Georgia pays about $700 in extra taxes every year. They blame the lost revenue on corporations that move money to tax havens, like the Cayman Islands.
Dan Smith with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group said “average taxpayers get stuck with the tab in the form of cuts to public programs, higher taxes or more debt.”
Two senators introduced legislation last year to close what they called “offshore tax loopholes,” but congress hasn’t moved on it.
For more on this story go to:
http://www.wsbradio.com/news/news/national/less-refund-irs-blame-cayman-islands/nXDSg/
As one of the blogs on the radio station’s website said:
“Spare me the wealth-envy crap. Stop looking at businesses moving off shores and start looking at why they are moving off-shore. We have the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. If you can relocate your head quarters and increase profit, why not?
“I got a brilliant idea. Let’s institute the Fair Tax. People keep 100% of their paychecks and taxes are only paid when you make the decision to buy something. Not only will people wind up with more money in their pocket, but we create the biggest corporate tax haven in the world. Business would be flocking here, and BOOM, economic growth finally returns.”
And part of another that is even more forceful:
“…. as Award has pointed out businesses are moving capital outside of the US to shelter it from our idiotic, draconian confiscatory tax system. Ask yourself why these businesses choose the Caymans. Perhaps it’s because that nation has constructed a tax system that is favorable to investment and rewards success. Consider also how much efforts businesses put forth to move all this money around. Would it not be easier and simpler to leave it at home in America? Maybe if the fools running the US gubmint formulated a tax structure like that in the Caymans, Switzerland, etc. the companies would feel safe leaving their money in US banks instead.”
The US PIRG report mentioned above by the radio station ifollows:
Report: Close Corporate Tax Loopholes
Many corporations and wealthy individuals use offshore tax havens—countries with minimal or no taxes—to avoid paying $150 billion in U.S. taxes each year.
Companies that do business in the U.S. but use offshore tax havens to avoid taxes—such as Microsoft, Exxon Mobil, and Bank of America— benefit from their access to America’s markets, workforce, infrastructure and security. Shirking the taxes that pay for these benefits violates the basic fairness of the tax system.
By shielding their income from U.S. taxes, corporations and wealthy individuals shift the tax burden to ordinary Americans, who must pick up the tab in the form of cuts to public services, more debt, or higher taxes. The $150 billion lost annually to offshore tax havens is a lot of money, especially at a time of difficult budget choices. To put this sum in perspective, consider how it could be used:
Education
Provide Pell Grants for 10 million students every year for four years.
More than double federal spending on Head Start, special education grants to states, federal grants to local school districts, and other education programs.
Pay for four years of free school breakfasts and lunches to twice the number of low-income students currently receiving them.
Jobs and the Economy
Create new jobs in our communities by providing loan guarantees for an additional half-million small businesses.
More than cover the $109 billion in automatic spending cuts that will take effect in 2013 if Congress does not avert the “fiscal cliff.”
Ten years’ worth of this lost revenue would achieve 37.5 percent of the ten-year, $4 trillion debt reduction goal favored by bipartisan leaders in Congress. It would cover three-quarters of the deficit reduction needed to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio.
Provide a tax cut of $1,068 for every person who filed taxes in America.
Clean Energy
Ensure the future of America’s renewable energy industry by providing thirty years’ worth of funding for tax incentives for the production of renewable energy—at twice the current rate of funding.
Reduce long-term energy costs by retrofitting one in every four existing housing units in the United States for improved energy efficiency, cutting energy usage by 22 percent per residence.
Transportation
Bring transportation into the 21st century by funding construction of 15 commuter rail lines, 50 light rail transit lines, and more than 800 bus rapid transit lines.
Create world-class passenger rail systems on the major travel corridors of both coasts—building a high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles and making major improvements to the heavily travelled Amtrak rail system between Boston and Washington, D.C.
Provide the federal share of funding for every high-speed rail project proposed by state governments in 2009.
Public Health
Double the current level of federal funding to improve the health of vulnerable citizens, including pregnant women, infants and children with special health care needs … and continue that level of funding for 12 years.
Triple funding for programs to end domestic violence and sexual abuse … and maintain that funding for more than half a century.
Triple the amount of federal cancer research funding for the next 10 years.
Exploration
Further human space exploration and achieve a manned outpost on the moon before 2030.
It’s Time to End Offshore Tax Havens
Americans deserve a tax code without loopholes that allow special interests to shirk their tax burden at the expense of ordinary taxpayers. The federal government can work towards achieving that goal and recapturing much of the $150 billion lost to offshore tax havens by implementing reforms such as:
Eliminating incentives for U.S. companies to transfer intellectual property oversees by tightening transfer pricing rules.
Preventing corporations from reporting different income figures to different countries.
Treating the profits of “foreign” corporations that are managed and controlled in the United States the same as domestic corporations.
Preventing corporations from taking bigger tax credits than they are entitled to by requiring them to report full information on tax credits they receive from foreign governments.
Preventing U.S. multinational corporations from deferring payment of U.S. tax on the profits they attribute to their foreign entities.
Ending the “active financing exception” and the “controlled foreign corporation” look-through rule that let companies artificially shift profits offshore.
See also iNews Cayman related story “Tax dodging by corporations and the wealthy cost each US taxpayer $1,026 in 2012” published April 5 2013 at:
