Corporate ripoff

This story calls to mind the remarks I used to see when I participated in an arborist forum for a while. Every time someone would complain about the disproportionate burden of taxes on the poor, some self-deluded fellow would come back with how corporations in this country pay overwhelmingly the largest portion of the taxes that keep us (the best system in the world, not to mention the most powerful) going.

Montana State Senator Jim Elliott (D) has a new op-ed in this week’s Queen City News in which he shows how multinational companies rip off small states. “In 2002, 40 percent of the largest 500 companies doing businesses in Montana paid less than $500 in Montana corporate income taxes,” Elliott notes. “Sixty-five of those companies paid less than $500 for four years running.”

As Chairman of the Senate Taxation Committee, Elliott made a formal request for income tax data for the 500 companies ranked by the amounts of their Montana sales. And though he is still fighting a court battle to make the companies’ names public, he managed to get a list of revenues-to-taxes paid that shows how much of a problem tax evasion has become.

Make no mistake about it - this is a national problem. The General Accounting Office estimates that the federal government lost up to $85 billion over the past decade to improper tax shelters. And the Multistate Tax Commission estimates the states lost $12 billion in corporate taxes in 2001 alone.
  Think Progress article