What You Already Knew About Taxes

But had no proof...

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report today showing that an average of two-thirds of companies operating in the United States paid no federal corporate income tax from 1998 - 2005. That's right, I said none. Zip. Zero. Nada.

  OMB Watch

According to an April report issued by the liberal Economic Policy Institute (EPI), in the 1950s corporate taxes represented one quarter of all federal revenue. Since 2000, this figure has fallen to about one tenth. The resulting shortfall has largely been made up through payroll taxes on US workers, according to the EPI.

  WSWS

And in case you thought this report was requested to investigate corporate tax evasion, think again.

Democratic Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota had made the request for the GAO study. The purported impetus behind the request was the senators’ suspicion that “foreign” corporations were benefiting unequally from the US tax code, paying substantially less than their US-based competitors through the use of transfer pricing.

[...]

Responding to the report, Levin and Dorgan condemned corporations for avoiding taxes. Levin claimed that the 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.”

Yeah, like they’re just now finding that out.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

DooDoo Economics

Quick quiz: what's going to cost the U.S. more over the next decade: the exploding costs of entitlements like Social Security and Medicare or Bush's tax cuts? Despite all the talk we hear about the prior, it's not even close -- the tax cuts are poised to cost the treasury far, far, more.

And yet, every Republican presidential candidate in the field, to a man, vows to make each of Bush's cut permanent, beyond their scheduled expiration in 2010. As the NYT's Tom Redburn notes today, over the next 10 years, it will cost "roughly $2.5 trillion in revenues now expected under current law. And that's just the beginning."

  TPM

No serious people believe this. Bush’s own budget director, Jim Nussle, recently said, “There are those including myself who … in the passion of the argument have made statements — I think I even made a statement once — that tax relief did pay for itself.” Needless to say, Nussle doesn’t believe that anymore. Edward P. Lazear, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, has said the same thing: “I certainly would not claim that tax cuts pay for themselves.”

And yet there’s Giuliani, bragging in a TV commercial about what he claims to “know” about tax policy. [“I know that reducing taxes produces more revenues.”] Please.

Of course, it’s worth noting that he’s not the only leading Republican making truly bizarre claims about taxes.

Today, Michael Kinsley takes Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee to task for their own nonsense.

  The Carpetbagger

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

The Tax Man Cometh

This month the IRS is beginning a new round of random audits which they will perform with a fine tooth comb because they think they can learn enough to refine tax laws and requirements that will enable them to snag some money currently getting away from them. This will be a veritable nightmare for the unlucky random filers, even if they happen to have been filing legitimately and honestly.

Itstrikes me as an interesting idea, since at the same time, Bush America is determined to drastically reduce tax liability for the very wealthy and corporate citizens. Of course that money has to be made up somewhere, and you know cutting down on war spending isn't going to be the place. In fact, that could well be the reason the IRS is looking for money from you poor slobs trying to keep running that small business of yours that Bush talks so dreamily about being the core of society. I hope if you get audited, you have kept every scrap of paper and dotted every i.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.