The Netherlands: Dutch multi-nationals will be forced to pay profit tax

Reed more at: 

https://nltimes.nl/2019/09/11/dutch-multinationals-will-forced-pay-profit-tax-netherlands-report

Support EU-Digest, which has reported the news without any political affiliation since 2004, and opposes those who seek to discredit and even destroy news organizations who believe in the right of a free Press. You can do that by investing in an advertisement in EU-Digest, or by giving a donation to keep our efforts going : to donate or advertise and pay by credit card, click on: https://www.paypal.com/webapps/hermes?token=8BP18304C1657151J&useraction=commit&mfid=1567106786154_8591ae1288ebf  

Big Business: Americas Monopoly Problem

Botanists define a rheophyte as an aquatic plant that thrives in swift-moving water. Coming from the Greek word rhéos, meaning a flow or stream, the term describes plants with wide roots and flexible stalks, well adapted to strong currents rather than a pond’s or pasture’s stillness. For most of the 20th century, U.S. lawmakers worked to maintain just these sorts of conditions for the U.S. economy—a dynamic system, briskly flowing, that forced firms to adapt to the unpredictable currents of the free market or be washed away.

In the past few decades, however, the economy has come to resemble something more like a stagnant pool. Entrepreneurship, as measured by the rate of new-business formation, has declined in each decade since the 1970s, and adults under 35 (a k a Millennials) are on track to be the least entrepreneurial generation on record.

This decline in dynamism has coincided with the rise of extraordinarily large and profitable firms that look discomfortingly like the monopolies and oligopolies of the 19th century. American strip malls and yellow pages used to brim with new small businesses. But today, in a lot where several mom-and-pop shops might once have opened, Walmart spawns another superstore. In almost every sector of the economy—including manufacturing, construction, retail, and the entire service sector—the big companies are getting bigger. The share of all businesses that are new firms, meanwhile, has fallen by 50 percent since 1978. According to the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank dedicated to advancing the ideals of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, “markets are now more concentrated and less competitive than at any point since the Gilded Age.”

To comprehend the scope of corporate consolidation, imagine a day in the life of a typical American and ask: How long does it take for her to interact with a market that isn’t nearly monopolized? She wakes up to browse the internet, access to which is sold through a local monopoly. She stocks up on food at a superstore such as Walmart, which owns a quarter of the grocery market. If she gets indigestion, she might go to a pharmacy, likely owned by one of three companies controlling 99 percent of that market. If she’s stressed and wants to relax outside the shadow of an oligopoly, she’ll have to stay away from ebooks, music, and beer; two companies control more than half of all sales in each of these markets. There is no escape—literally. She can try boarding an airplane, but four corporations control 80 percent of the seats on domestic flights.

Politicians from both parties publicly worship the solemn dignity of entrepreneurship and small businesses. But by the numbers, America has become the land of the big and the home of the consolidated.

Note EU-Digest: this is not only a problem limited to the US, but also a problem experienced by most of the Western world and many other major industrial countries around the globe.

Read more: Americas Monopoly Problem

The New Age of Political Discontent: Hammering Hard on Global Businesses

The new global era has created discontent

Around the world, people are unhappy with politics.

In the United States, only 18 percent of Gallup respondents approve of how Congress is doing its job. Across Europe, only 33 percent of Eurobarometer respondents say they trust the European Union policies. Over the past year, violent labor protests have erupted in South Korea and France. In Latin America, prominent politicians are harassed in restaurants, malls, and airports, and their humiliations are posted on YouTube.

This intense public unrest is driving global politics and policy making in powerful ways, and the consequences for multinational companies are significant. And, like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, each unhappy policy is different.

Understanding the whys and hows of each national family’s unhappiness is essential if corporate executives are to navigate the risks and opportunities of this new era.

Globalization Reaches Its Tipping Point

Underneath this worldwide frustration, there are some common elements: slow economic growth and rising inequality, structural unemployment, political incompetence, and venality. The financial crisis of 2008 - 2009 was not the beginning of this new era of discontent, but it did catalyze some of the responses. That crisis began in the developed markets of the United States and Europe. But as these economies slowed, the fall in demand for commodities and manufactured exports quickly spread the pain to emerging markets. And while global economic downturns have occurred before, this time disruptive technologies and digital communications intensified and magnified popular angst.

But while the underlying conditions may be similar, political and policy responses to it have been strikingly different, particularly between developed and developing countries. In developed countries, popular frustration is leading to increasingly unpredictable populist politics and policies that are often anti-trade and challenging for businesses. In developing countries, popular discontent is driving a more business-friendly set of responses.

The most compelling explanation for the difference in policy responses in developed and developing countries is their differing experiences with globalization – the movement of goods, money, people, and ideas across borders. While globalization has lifted millions out of poverty in developing countries, the Western middle class has suffered as manufacturing and blue collar jobs moved abroad. And while globalization has led to new opportunities for large numbers of newly mobile immigrants from the developing world, their arrival has stirred up fear, anger, and prejudice in many parts of the West.

Globalization has opened a rift between the developed and developing world.

In the developed world, anxiety over the economy has translated into the view among some citizens that the political establishment does not care about their welfare. The financial crisis and the threat of terrorism have convinced them that their leaders have failed to provide either effective economic management or public safety. The result has been a populist and nationalist surge across the United States and Europe. As a result, ideas that were previously out of bounds have now entered the marketplace of ideas.

In Western countries where politics is dominated by two parties, anti-establishment sentiment has propelled the rise of fringe candidates within the main parties, including Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the United States and Jeremy Corbyn of the UK’s Labour party. This has hollowed out the political center, increased partisanship, and widened the array of possible policy outcomes.

Among many developing countries, the story is different. The developing world benefited from the commodities supercycle, in which natural resource extraction supported economic growth that swelled government coffers. It also allowed governments to avoid hard policy choices and structural reforms, creating an environment in which corruption could flourish. Today, with exports and commodity prices in the doldrums, those economies are suffering, and the reckoning has arrived.

To be sure, there is plenty of anger directed at politicians in the developing world for sins ranging from indifference to corruption to incompetence. In Brazil, the president was impeached and removed from office; in Mexico, South Africa, and South Korea, incumbent presidents are suffering dismally low approval ratings; and in Taiwan, Nigeria, Indonesia, and India, voters rejected establishment parties in favor of new leadership. But in all these cases, the response by policymakers has been to pursue market-friendly reforms. Why has there been such a relatively orthodox set of policy initiatives across such a diverse set of countries even as the developed world is rushing pell-mell in the opposite direction?

FOR THE COMPLETE REPORT CLICK HERE: The New Age of Political Discontent: Hammering Hard on Global Businesses - Lexology

Corruption: A Worldwide disease

Unfortunately we keep voting in the same political crooks over and over .

For the complete report click here

Multi-National Tax Dodging: End transnationals' $212 billion tax dodge on poorest countries - by Toby Quantrill

New estimates, from International Monetary Fund researchers, suggest that developing countries lose up to $212 billion a year to multinational tax avoidance alone. The IMF researchers also reckon that corporate tax avoidance is a far worse problem for poor countries than for rich countries, relative to the size of their economies.

That's a sum that could transform the lives of untold numbers of people living in poverty. A recent study published in the medical journal The Lancet demonstrates that when governments in poor countries increase their income from tax it leads directly to greater spending on vital healthcare.

Back in the room of tax campaigners, it was also clear to us that the OECD plan to catch up with multinationals would only tackle some of the symptoms, not the causes of global tax avoidance. Furthermore, we knew the reform process would be influenced by powerful vested interests, including accountancy giants and other multinationals with huge stakes in the status quo.

A group of people representing organizations from across the globe- decided to initiate a second investigation of the same problem, but from a different perspective. We agreed to bring together a group of senior figures with a range of experience and expertise from across the globe, and especially from developing countries.
This became the Independent Commission on the Reform of International Corporate Taxation and we asked the commissioners to consider reforms of the global tax system, from the perspective of the global public interest rather than national advantage.

The Commissioners' brief was to ask the simple questions that get to the heart of how the system 'works' and to suggest fair, effective and sustainable changes to help solve the core problems.
This week the Commission launched its landmark report at an economics event in Trento, Italy, just ahead of the G7 summit in Bavaria. The document, while only 11 pages long, delivers a devastating critique of the tax system and demands sweeping changes to the existing international rules and governing institutions.

"Tax abuse by multinational corporations increases the tax burden on other taxpayers, violates the corporations' civic obligations, robs developed and developing countries of critical resources to fight poverty and fund public services, exacerbates income inequality, and increases developing country reliance on foreign assistance", it argues.

"Every individual and country is affected by corporate tax abuse, and therefore the debate over multinational corporate tax avoidance should be widened and made more accessible to the public."


Despite the painfully evident problems caused by the fiction that multinationals' subsidiaries are independent of each another, it remains an undisputed assumption at the heart of the global tax system and acts as a block to any truly effective reform.

The OECD meanwhile is already starting to claim that its tax reform project is working. But as a number of reports and analyses are showing, its work so far will have a limited impact in richer countries and simply not deal with the fundamental problem for poor countries.
 
Read more: End transnationals' $212 billion tax dodge on poorest countries - The Ecologist

Africa: Corporate Tax Dodging Cheats Africa Out of 6 Billion Dollars, Says Oxfam - by Sean Buchanan

G7-based companies and investors cheated Africa out of an estimated six billion dollars in a year through just one form of tax dodging, according to a new Oxfam report 'Money talks: Africa at the G7', released Jun. 2.

This is equivalent to three times the amount needed to plug the healthcare funding gap in the Ebola-affected countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and at-risk Guinea Bissau.

According to an Oxfam briefing paper release in April this year, an estimated 1.7 billion dollars is required to close the healthcare funding gap to improve dangerously inadequate health systems in these countries. This figure is based on raising spending to the recommendation of the World Health Organisation (WHO) that 86 dollars per capita is required to achieve the minimum package of essential services.

"Multinational companies, many with headquarters in the US  United Kingdom and other G7 countries, are cheating African countries out of billions of dollars in vital tax revenues that could help vulnerable people get decent healthcare and send their children to school",   saysNick Brye, Oxfam's Head of U.K. Campaigns

Read more: allAfrica.com: Africa: Corporate Tax Dodging Cheats Africa Out of 6 Billion Dollars, Says Oxfam

US Economy: America’s trade deficit is a big drag on the economy - but is it really?

According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. non-petroleum trade gap last year was the highest ever recorded — and that’s after adjusting for inflation. 

It paints a depressing picture where every day Americans import over a billion dollars more in goods from other countries than they export. 

The Government reported trade deficit with just China and the European Union totaled half a trillion dollars in 2014.  If U.S. trade with the rest of the world were balanced, the nation’s economic growth rate last year would have been 3.6% rather than 2.6%.

It seems therefore to some that America's widening trade and current account deficits, that when it comes to selling goods and services overseas, U.S. firms are either uncompetitive or unfairly treated in various foreign markets — or both.

The Globalist notes: "Nothing could be further from the truth."

One of the most dangerous deficits today is not one of trade — but rather a deficit in understanding how U.S. firms compete and sell products in the world marketplace.

Simply put, American firms compete more through foreign direct investment — where they usually establish a local presence in international markets by operating on the ground — rather than through arm's-length trade.

Because foreign affiliate sales are not included in U.S. exports, a great deal of global commerce is missing from the officially reported trade figures.

Accordingly, while the monthly trade deficit paints a depressing picture of U.S. global commerce, investors would do well to remember that U.S. multinationals have more than 30,000 foreign affiliates strategically located around the world. And these affiliates are ringing up record earnings.

Bottom line: please take the depressing news about the US ever increasing trade deficit with a grain of salt  Even though the statistical graph on the deficit seems to be going higher and higher and the global image of the United States as a savvy trader lower and lower — the global earnings of U.S. multinationals have never been higher. It is all a question of perception.

EU-Digest 

EU Parliament: More than 30,000 lobbyists and counting: Brussels under corporate siege

When the Polish MEP Róża Thun was elected five years ago, she thought the job would be fairly straightforward. She hadn't reckoned with the lobbyists.

Take mobile phone charges. She saw the fact that EU citizens pay eye-watering sums in other EU states as an anomaly that needed fixing. But it wasn't that simple. "We had telephone companies and lobbyists who started to invade us," she recalls. "They obviously didn't want to reduce roaming charges because it would hit them in the pocket."

To stroll around the vast, ugly and permanent building site that is Brussels' European district is to brush up against the power of the lobbies. Every office block, every glass and steel construction within a kilometre of the EU Commission council and parliament is peopled by some of the globe's biggest corporate names.

Thousands of companies, banks, law firms, PR consultancies and trade associations are there to bend ears and influence the regulations and laws that shape Europe's single market, fix trade deals, and govern economic and commercial behaviour in the European Union of 507 million people.

Lobbying is a billion-euro industry in Brussels. According to Corporate Europe Observatory, a watchdog campaigning for greater transparency, there are at least 30,000 lobbyists in Brussels, nearly matching the 31,000 staff employed by the European commission and making it second only to Washington in the concentration of those seeking to affect legislation. Lobbyists sign a transparency register run by the parliament and the commission, though it is not mandatory.

By some estimates, they influence 75% of legislation. In principle, lobbyists give politicians information and arguments during the decision-making process. In practice, the corridors of the parliament often teem with individuals, who meet MEPs in their offices or in open spaces such as the "Mickey Mouse bar" (nicknamed so because of the shape of its seats) inside the parliament.

They explain their concerns, provide a "position paper", and send in suggestions for amendments to legislative proposals. Of course, the final decision is taken by MEPs. But examples are legion of the tail wagging the dog.

Lobbying is such a crucial part of the climate in Brussels that it has spawned manuals, a documentary (Who Really Runs the EU?) and even "the worst lobby awards". Not surprisingly, the biggest movers and shakers agitate for the biggest industries with the most to gain – and lose – from European legislation.

Basically, if you are in Bruxelles or Washington - the lobbyists have taken over and politics have not much to do with Democracy anymore.

EU-Digest

Corporate Secrecy: Do you know what your company is doing? - by Leslie Shaffer

The operations of the 124 largest publicly traded companies are opaque, with relatively few fully revealing their corporate holdings, financial information or anti-corruption efforts, according to a new report from Transparency International.

"Acts of corruption are very often aided by the use of opaque company structures and secrecy jurisdictions," the report said. "Comprehensive public reporting is a key component of the measures companies must take to address corruption and provide the transparency that is the basis for robust and accountable governance."

Transparency International studied three categories: reporting on anticorruption programs, organizational transparency and country-by-country reporting.

Just one company, Vodafone, managed to score at least 50 percent across all three categories, the report said.

Only three of the 124 companies studied don't commit to complying with anti-corruptions laws, but 68 don't disclose their political contributions and only 56 forbid "facilitation payments," or small bribes, the report said.
Read more: Do you know what your company is doing?

Multi - National Tax Evasion: Is Burger King’s move to Canada a raw deal for U.S. taxpayers?.- by Eileen Appelbaum

With tax inversions, by reincorporating overseas and turning the foreign subsidiary into the “parent” company, at least on paper, the company is free to use its offshore cash however it wants without having to pay U.S. corporate taxes on the money. Private equity companies have a history of domiciling portfolio companies that do most of their business in the U.S. in the Cayman Islands or other tax havens.

So it may not be surprising that it is Burger King BKW 3.16% , which was formerly private equity- owned and whose major shareholder is still the PE firm 3G Group, whose massive tax inversion deal breaks this mold. Most tax inversions involve a large U.S. multinational acquiring a small subsidiary, but Burger King and Tim Horton’s are both multi-billion dollar businesses with similar market capitalizations. Most tax inversions have been motivated by a desire to bring offshore profits back to the U.S., but Burger King doesn’t have much in the way of profits parked offshore.

Burger King executives have defended the deal by saying that plans to expand globally is what’s driving the deal rather than tax considerations, but tax experts are skeptical of this explanation. It seems the company just wants to pay lower taxes. In any case, if the deal is not met with customer resistance as Walgreen’s now-abandoned tax inversion plan was, it could lead other multinationals that directly serve consumers to renounce their U.S. citizenship to reduce their taxes.

This may be legal, but that doesn’t mean that it’s right. The corporate defense that companies need to do what’s best for their shareholders and take advantage of every loophole in the corporate tax code rings hollow when these companies employ an army of lobbyists to make sure that the tax code is riddled with loopholes.

Public outrage at the recent spate of tax inversions by high-profile multinationals that want to shift profits earned in the U.S. overseas to reduce their tax bill may finally overcome the clout of corporate interests and lead to action by Congress to limit the opportunities for engaging in this tax avoidance scheme. Treasury and the IRS are also considering measures to discourage tax inversions by making earnings ‘stripping’ illegal and eliminating some of the benefits of such deals.

Even before the Burger King deal was announced, the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the potential tax revenue the Treasury would lose to tax inversions over the next 10 years could amount to $19.5 billion. If not stopped soon, lost tax revenue from tax inversions may mount much higher. The country faces an urgent need to stop corporate inversions. This is one tax loophole that Congress should move quickly to close.

Read more: Is Burger King’s move to Canada a raw deal for U.S. taxpayers?

Multi-National Corporations: The Increasing Irrelevance Of Corporate Nationality - Robert Reich:

“You shouldn’t get to call yourself an American company only when you want a handout from the American taxpayers,” President Obama said Thursday. He was referring to American corporations now busily acquiring foreign companies in order to become non-American, thereby reducing their U.S. tax bill.

But the President might as well have been talking about all large American multinationals. Only about a fifth of IBM’s worldwide employees are American, for example, and only 40 percent of GE’s. Most of Caterpillar’s recent hires and investments have been made outside the US. In fact, since 2000, almost every big American multinational corporation has created more jobs outside the United States than inside. If you add in their foreign sub-contractors, the foreign total is even higher.

At the same time, though, many foreign-based companies have been creating jobs in the United States. They now employ around 6 million Americans, and account for almost 20 percent of U.S. exports. Even a household brand like Anheuser-Busch, the nation’s best-selling beer maker, employing thousands of Americans, is foreign (part of Belgian-based beer giant InBev).

Meanwhile, foreign investors are buying an increasing number of shares in American corporations, and American investors are buying up foreign stocks. Who’s us? Who’s them? Increasingly, corporate nationality is whatever a corporation decides it is. So instead of worrying about who’s American and who’s not, here’s a better idea: Create incentives for any global company to do what we’d like it to do in the United States.

For example, “American” corporations get generous tax credits and subsidies for research and development, courtesy of American taxpayers. But in reducing these corporations’ costs of R&D in the United States, those tax credits and subsidies can end up providing extra money for them to do more R&D abroad. 3M is building research centers overseas at a faster clip than it’s expanding them in America. Its CEO explained this was “in preparation for a world where the West is no longer the dominant manufacturing power.”

3M is hardly alone. Since the early 2000s, most of the growth in the number of R&D workers employed by U.S.-based multinational companies have been in their foreign operations, according to the National Science Board, the policy-making arm of the National Science Foundation. It would make more sense to limit R&D tax credits and subsidies to additional R&D done in the U.S. over and above current levels – and give them to any global corporation increasing its R&D in America, regardless of the company’s nationality.

Read: Robert Reich: The Increasing Irrelevance Of Corporate Nationality

Internet Multi-Nationals - Movie rental Netflix expands to France, Germany

will expand into Germany, France and four other European countries later this year as the internet video service tries to build an international following that might eventually surpass its U.S. audience.

The additional markets announced Wednesday will extend Netflix's reach into nearly 50 countries, including 13 in Europe. Besides Germany and France, the latest countries on Netflix's list are Switzerland, Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg. The Los Gatos, California, company entered Europe in 2012 when its Internet video service debuted in the U.K. and Ireland.

Earlier this year, Netflix Inc. disclosed its plans to sell its service in more European countries without identifying where they would be.

The company still isn't saying which month its service will be available in the new markets or how much it will cost. Netflix recently raised its internet streaming prices for new customers by about $1 US per month around the world. With the increase, Netflix charges $9 per month for unlimited video streaming in the U.S.

The company froze rates at $8 per month for two years for subscribers before the May 9 increase.

Netflix ended March with 35.7 million U.S. subscribers and an additional 12.7 million customers in the rest of the world.

The company has set a long-term goal of 60 million to 90 million U.S. subscribers and more than 100 million internationally.

Read more: Netflix expands to France, Germany - Technology & Science - CBC News

USA: Corporate Greed: 13 Mindblowing Facts About America’s Tax-Dodging Corporations

A judicious writer avoids adjectives like “mindblowing,” especially when covering political or economic issues.
But no other word seems to describe the stunning reality of corporate taxation in modern America, which cries out for the italics-heavy, exclamation-point-driven format made famous by Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

Stylistic overkill? Read these thirteen facts and you may change your mind.

1. We’re told we can’t “afford” full Social Security benefits, even though closing corporate tax-haven loopholes would pay for Obama’s “chained CPI” benefit cut more than ten times over!

Abusive offshore tax havens cost the US $150 billion in lost tax revenue every year (via FACT Coalition). That’s $1.5 trillion over the next ten years.

The “chained CPI” cut, proposed by President Obama and supported by Republicans, is projected to “save” a total of $122 billion to $130 billion over the same time period by denying benefits to seniors and disabled people.

It’s true. “Serious” politicians and pundits are demanding that ordinary people sacrifice earned benefits, while at the same time allowing corporations to avoid more than ten times as much in taxes.

2. Corporate tax rates are near their 60-year low, even though profits are at a 60-year high!

Need we say more?  (Source: Americans for Tax Fairness.)

3. Wells Fargo got $8 billion in tax breaks, even as executives at its subsidiary Wachovia avoided indictment for laundering money for the Mexican drug cartels!

 That’s right. Wells Fargo paid a negative tax rate of -1.4 percent between 2008 and 2010 while Wachovia, a Wells Fargo subsidiary, admitted to laundering more than $378 billion for Mexican drug gangs.

We’re talking about crazed killers like “El Loco” and gangs like “Los Zetas” – gangs who cut people’ heads off and toss them out onto disco dance floors or display them in the town square.

Wachovia bankers ignored repeated warnings from law enforcement officials, and continued to launder money for cartels that have murdered tens of thousands.

And yet no criminal indictments were handed down because, as a Senate investigator told Bloomberg News, “”There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure.”

4. Some other huge corporations paid less than nothing, too.

Pepco Holdings (-57.6% tax rate)
General Electric (-45.3%)
DuPont (-3.4%)
Verizon (-2.9%)
Boeing (-1.8%)
Honeywell (-0.7%)

(Source: Citizens for Tax Justice)

5. The amount of money US corporations are holding offshore is an estimated one trillion dollars!

Rather than tax these profits the way other countries do, corporate politicians are promoting a tax “repatriation” break that would let corporations “bring this money home” while paying even less than their currently low rates.

They tried that in 2004 and it didn’t create any jobs. In fact, corporations took the tax break and then fired thousands of people. What “repatriation” did do is line a lot of wealthy investors’ pockets. So, naturally, they want to do it again.

6. One building in the Cayman Islands is the official location of 18,857 corporations!

According to the Government Accountability Office, a five-story building called “Ugland House” is home to nearly twenty thousand corporations. That’s impressive, especially for such a small edifice. (Perhaps it has supernatural half-floors and space-time defying “mind tunnels” like the office in Being John Malkovich.)

While impressive, Ugland House’s distinction pales next to that of 1209 North Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware. According to one investigation, that address is home to 217,000 corporations.

That’s because Delaware has very generous tax rules – and, as a result, is home to more than half of all the corporate subsidiaries in the United States.That’s startling, since only 1/342th of the nation’s population lives in that state (917,092 residents, out of a national total of 313,914,040, according to the latest( census results).

7. Conservatives complain about the “official” corporate tax rate in this country, but corporations actually pay roughly one-third of the official rate in actual taxes.

The official, or “statutory,” corporate tax rate is 35 percent. But the actual rate paid by American corporations is only 12 percent, less than that paid by many middle-class Americans.  (Source: The FACT Coalition.) 

In fact, US Corporations pay less tax as a percentage of the GDP than corporations in Canada. Or Japan …

… or South Korea. Or Norway. Or Luxembourg, New Zealand, Israel, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, and Italy.  (Source: OECD StatsExtract interactive database.) 

8. Corporations used to pay 30 percent of Federal taxes, and now they pay less than 7 percent!

That’s because the corporate tax rate has plunged since Dwight D. Eisenhower was President and is now the lowest it’s been in modern history.

(Source: FACT Coalition.)

9. Big corporations paid $216 million to Congress and got $223 billion in tax breaks!

As Citizens for Tax Justice and USPIRG reported, 280 large and profitable corporations contributed $216 million to Congressional campaigns over four election cycles and got nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars in tax breaks.

That’s a terrific investment for them – a return of more than a thousand to one – but it’s a bad deal for the American people.

10. We don’t even know who owns some corporations, even though that makes it easier to evade taxes, dodge creditors, avoid paying alimony or child support, and even fund terrorism!

Here are some examples of investments that might represent a terror threat. Corporate interests are blocking disclosure rules that would help protect our national security.

11. Bank of America committed foreclosure fraud, was bailed out by the government, and then paid no taxes on $4.4 billion in profit!

That’s right. In 2010, while BofA was negotiating a sweet settlement deal for its foreclosure fraud, it paid nothing in taxes. (Source: FACT Coalition.) Zero, on $17.2 billion in offshore earnings. (Source: Americans for Tax Fairness.)

Its $4.1 billion tax break came on the heels of the bank’s taxpayer-funded bailout, immunity from prosecution for its criminal employees, and a cushy government settlement for its foreclosure fraud.

Now David Dayen reports that the bank has apparently continued to defraud customers in violation of its government settlement. Whistleblowers have stated in affidavits that they were “told to lie” to customers, continued to deceive homeowners before foreclosing on them, and flipped customers to new servicing companies to invalidate previous homeowner agreements.

12. What they call “tax reform” would actually prevent our elected representatives from giving businesses financial incentives to improve our lives!

The word “reform” is an honorable one that’s been put to some dishonorable uses lately. “Entitlement reform,” for example, is merely a euphemism for gutting Social Security and Medicare.

Similarly, corporate-backed politicians are pushing a formula for permanent corporate tax breaks and calling it “tax reform.” They insist their “reform” be “revenue neutral” and say it will “broaden the base while lowering the rate.”

Here’s an English translation: The current, unsustainably low rates for corporations would be made permanent, while eliminating many tax deductions in the name of “simplification.”

Here’s what that really means: The domestic tax credit for creating jobs? Gone. Tax breaks for protecting the environment with clean energy, rather than harming other people’s health and leaving a mess for the rest of us to clean up? Gone.

All in all we’d lose dozens of important policies that make our lives better, while permanently fixing corporate taxes at today’s cushy giveaway rates.

“Reform”? Ripoff is more like it.

13. Despite their greed, mismanagement, and freeloading, tax-dodging corporations are using shell organizations like “Fix the Debt” and “the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget” to tell ordinary Americans they have to sacrifice even more to preserve corporate wealth!

These organizations are using the heads of failed banks – people like Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs – to dispense “advice on the economy.” That’s like getting navigation tips from the captain of the Exxon Valdez.

(Tax breaks for Exxon Mobil: $4.1 billion between 2008 and 2010. The company paid no taxes at all in 2009.)

These executives and their paid spokespeople tell the rest of us we need to “sacrifice” and “tighten our belts” so that their party can go on forever. And too often they’re treated as credible sources, rather than as corrupting influences on our public life.

It’s all true – and there are many more astonishing facts to be found in the world of corporate taxation. To fix the economy more people will need to learn about them – and demand that they be changed.

Read more: 13 Mindblowing Facts About America’s Tax-Dodging Corporations

EU-US Trade Negotiations: EU sovereignty ‘at risk’ if judicial independence is surrendered to multinational corporations

More than 200 organisations across the EU, including the TUC, Greenpeace and War on Want, have written a joint letter to European and American trade negotiators demanding the removal of the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) process from the final treaty.

“ISDS is a one-way street by which corporations can challenge government policies, but neither governments nor individuals are granted comparable rights to hold corporations accountable,” they wrote.

Campaign groups in Britain are due to put their concerns to the Department of Business  this Wednesday, while an Early Day Motion in Parliament, signed by MPs from all parties, calls for the trade talks to be frozen until the issue is resolved.

The European Commission and the British Government insisted the deal would include safeguards to prevent misuse by corporations, thus guaranteeing the right of EU governments to “pursue legitimate public policy objectives such as social, environmental, security, public health and safety” without the risk of being sued.

ISDS has been a long-established principle of multilateral trade deals between countries and is a process designed to ensure investors are not discriminated against by governments or biased judicial systems. It allows companies who believe they have been unfairly treated to take states to a neutral arbitration panel that can award compensation for loss of earnings.

But in recent years, campaigners claim, it has been used by large multinational companies to sue governments acting in the public interest. The Slovak Republic was forced to pay $22m (£13.4m) damages after the government reversed the liberalisation of its health-insurance market.

Campaigners say the arbitration panels are unaccountable and are not likely to assess issues of national interest when making decisions.

Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, who tabled the parliamentary motion, said the move would “overturn decades of laws and regulations formed through democratic processes on both sides of the Atlantic”.

Former British Labour minister John Healey, who chairs the British parliamentary group on EU-US trade and investment, said: “It is not clear ISDSs are justified at all when the agreement will be struck between countries with some of the most advanced and stable legal systems in the world.”

Frances O’Grady, TUC general secretary, said: “These clauses could thwart attempts by a future government to bring our health service back towards public ownership.”

Charlie Kronick, senior climate adviser at Greenpeace, said the group feared ISDS provisions could be used to prevent the EU from restricting imports of US diesel made from polluting tar sands in Canada.

But EU trade spokesman John Clancy said the fears of campaigners were entirely misplaced. “The sad irony is that the many critics of investment protection and in particular ISDS are actually arguing for us to maintain the status quo which is at the heart of the problem.”

He added: “The EU wants to close down such loopholes in a future EU-US deal by spelling out what is and is not possible, improving transparency and creating modern, state-of-the art investment arrangements.”

The question which seems to remain ignored by the EU Commission and EU Parliament is how the EU can even  negotiate with a partner like the US, where most  of the political establishment is now indirectly on the payroll of multi-national and local corporations and which has a spy-network in place which is collecting personal data, not only from EU-citizens, but also is able to extrapolate strategic negotiation information from the EU-trade negotiation team wherever they may be. 

To anyone with at least some intelligence these trade negotiations have, so far, not been carried out on a level playing field and the EU better take off their "blinders" .    

EU-Digest

EU leaders talk tough on tackling Amazon, Google over taxes

Tax evasion and money laundering

Britain, France and Germany called for stricter rules to stop companies such as Google, Apple and Amazon aggressively avoiding taxes in austerity bitten Europe, while acknowledging they had done nothing unlawful.

At a summit to discuss energy and tax policy, the leaders of the three largest EU countries took theopportunity at news conferences to lament the impact of corporate tax avoidance, following several cases involving U.S. firms.

The issue has hit a nerve in Europe where many countries are cutting back on social spending and squeezing workers in order to reduce national deficits and debt.

Most recently a U.S. Senate report found that Apple Inc had paid just 2 percent tax on $74 billion in overseas income, largely by exploiting a loophole in Ireland's tax code.

"We cannot accept that a certain number of companies can put themselves in situations where they escape paying taxes in ways that are legal," French President Francois Hollande said.

"We must coordinate at a European level, harmonize our rules and come up with strategies to stop this."
British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has put tax at the top of the agenda for a meeting of the G8 in Ireland next month, was equally clear about the need for coordination steps.

"There is a real chance of seeing the sort of international action that we need to fix this problem," he said. "You can't do it on your own, you have to have that international action and that is why I think today has been a bit of a breakthrough."

France and Britain in particular have grown concerned by the sheer scale of the legal tax schemes.


Read more: EU leaders talk tough on tackling Amazon, Google over taxes | Reuters

The Netherlands - Tax Safe Haven In Trouble: Secretary of Finance Weekers Defends Loopholes Dutch Tax System in Parliament

Dutch State Finance Secretary Frans Weekers was asked today to justify and explain the controversy  surrounding the Dutch Tax system.  

The Parliament wants the Government to explain the extend of the tax evasions which took place and still seem to be taking place, damaging  the Netherlands image around the world. 

It was also noted that several requests for additional information by the Press to the Government tax authorities about this issue remained unanswered.

A study by the Volkskrant, a major Dutch newspaper, shows that the Netherlands Tax System, always  known  as a safe haven for the payment of dividends, interest and royalties, has now become a flawed and controversial system, favoring Multi-National corporations exploiting loopholes in the system to avoid paying millions in corporate taxes.

EU-Digest

David Cameron: Tax Avoidance By Major Companies To Be Focus Of G-8 This Year - by Casandra Vinograd

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday he will use his country's year-long presidency of the G-8 to target tax-dodging tactics by businesses.

Public anger has been mounting in Britain after lawmakers accused major multinational companies including Starbucks, Google and Amazon of "immorally" avoiding paying tax.

Companies operating in Europe can base themselves in any of the 27 European Union nations, allowing them to take advantage of a particular country's low tax rates. Google has picked Ireland and Bermuda, Starbucks is based in The Netherlands and Amazon in Luxembourg.

Cameron said he plans to "drive a more serious debate" on tax evasion and avoidance at this year's meetings of G-8, the group of eight leading industrial countries, acknowledging that there is a difference between the two since tax evasion is illegal.

"But there are some forms of avoidance have become so aggressive that I think it is right to say these raise ethical issues, and it's time to call for more responsibility and for governments to act accordingly," he told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "This is an issue whose time has come."

He said the practice of companies navigating their way around legitimate tax systems thanks to "an army of clever accountants" needs to stop and businesses must pay their fair share.

Read more: David Cameron: Tax Avoidance By Major Companies To Be Focus Of G-8 This Year

The Netherlands: A pessimistic view by Unilever CEO Polman on the economy of Europe

Unilever Chief Executive Officer Paul Polman said Europe is facing 10 years of economic stagnation while the U.S. grapples with the rise of an “emerging poor” class dependent on government benefits.
“We are in for at least 10 years of slow economic growth in Europe, and I don’t see that changing,” Polman said in an interview at Bloomberg headquarters in New York.

“If you run a business like mine and don’t assume that, you are fooling yourself. I hope for the benefit of Europe I am proven wrong, but even then we are in a better position by taking that as our starting point. The key thing is to see reality in the eye.”

Polman said declining consumer confidence in the U.S. has “people worried” and the recovery in the world’s largest economy will be muted, with GDP growth of 2 percent “if you’re lucky.” With 46 million people relying on government benefits to buy food, he said, “people scrape by until the end of the month.”

The maker of Axe body sprays and Hellmann’s mayonnaise generates about 16 percent of its 50 billion euros ($65 billion) in annual sales in the U.S. and about 25 percent in Europe, according to estimates from analysts at Berenberg Bank and RBC Capital Markets.

The London- and Rotterdam-based company has adapted to deteriorating economic conditions by cutting costs, expanding in emerging markets like Indonesia and pushing lower-cost brands like Suave shampoo, Polman said.

Note EU-Digest: this is a pessimistic view by a Multi-National corporation worried about the impact of  possible increased regulatory measures on the "unregulated, tax evading multi-national and corporate industry" around the Globe.. Mr. Polman in this report offers absolutely no new ideas as to how Unilever could provide a positive impact on the economy, except cost cutting and the firing of employees. 

Read more: Unilever CEO Polman Says Europe Faces 10-Year Economic Slump

Starbucks, Amazon, Google face British (and EU) tax questions - by David Stringer

On Monday British lawmakers accused major multinational companies of aggressive tax avoidance, amid government calls for a global crackdown on firms that seek to evade taxes.

In sometimes bitter exchanges at a three-hour parliamentary committee hearing, legislators questioned Starbucks, Google and Amazon.com about the amount of tax they pay to the United Kingdom.

Lawmakers scoffed as Troy Alstead, Starbucks global chief financial officer, claimed the Seattle-based coffee giant had reported losses for all but one of the 15 years it has operated in Britain because of poor performance — and was not an attempt to minimize its taxes in Britain. “You have run the business for 15 years and are losing money and you are carrying on investing here. It just doesn’t ring true,” said Margaret Hodge, head of parliament’s Public Accounts Committee.

Alstead acknowledged to the panel that its taxable profits in the U.K. are calculated after royalties paid to its European headquarters in the Netherlands have been deducted. He said Starbucks had a special tax arrangement with the Dutch government covering its headquarters, but he declined to give details.
“Respectfully I can assure you there is no tax avoidance here,” Alstead told the panel.
Companies operating in Europe can base themselves in any of the 27 European Union nations, allowing them to take advantage of a particular country’s low tax rates.

Note EU-Digest: this "tax loophole game" by multi-national corporations operating in Europe can only be stopped by coordinated action of  EU-member countries and the European parliament. With little or no Government control or established guidelines multi-national corporations are presently exploiting the system to its fullest.

Read more: Starbucks, Amazon, Google face British tax questions | Business & Technology | The Seattle Times

Corporations take ethics very lightly and most get away with "murder"

Corporations carry out some of the most horrific ethics and human rights abuses of modern times, but it is increasingly difficult to hold them to account. Economic globalization and the rise of transnational corporate power have created a favorable climate for corporate human rights abusers, which are governed principally by the codes of supply and demand and show genuine loyalty only to their stockholders.

World’s worst corporate abuses includes issues as diverse as assassination, torture, kidnapping, environmental degradation, huge political campaign donations, violently repressing political rights, releasing toxins into pristine environments, destroying homes, discrimination, and causing widespread health problems.

Only very few corporate ethics abuses have resulted in these companies being forced to close down. In most cases they usually pay their way out of their problems and often their top management also usually gets off scot free and many even still stay in charge of their corporations

Global Exchange recently put out a list of "most wanted Corporate Criminals gives you information about the abusive behavior of this year’s worst corporations, and tells you who is responsible, and how to connect with and support people who are doing something about it.

The List

1. Bank of America for funding of environmentally harmful coal industry, excessive campaign contributions

2. Chevron for damaging ecosystem and people of Ecuador, repression of protest to oil extraction, Brazil spill

3. Century International Arms for producing Romanian AKs, which are frequently smuggled into Mexico

4. Halliburton for hydraulic fracturing, involvement in the Gulf spill, bribery in Nigeria

5. The Hershey Company for refusing to use fair trade labor and continuing to support labor that violates human rights standards

6. Monsanto for promotion of monocropping, involvement in government, refusing to label product, bankrupting small farms

7. Pacific Rim for mining in El Salvador

8. TransCanada for plans to construct Keyston XL Pipeline

9. Veolia for operations in Israel, high prices and bad service, privitization of water

10. Wal-Mart for unfair treatment of employees, use of sweatshop labor, bribery in Mexico

In more recent developments

British GlaxoSmithKline pharmaceutical company has agreed to pay $3 billion US in criminal and civil fines and plead guilty to misdemeanour criminal charges related to the sale and marketing of its antidepressants Paxil and Wellbutrin and the diabetes drug Avandia in the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history. 

US Federal regulators propose a $3.7 million civil penalty against the TransCanada owners of a pipeline that ruptured in 2010, dumping more than three billion litres of oil into a Michigan river.

Barclays Plc was fined 290 million pounds ($451.4 million), the largest penalties ever imposed by regulators in the U.S. and U.K., after admitting it submitted false London and euro interbank offered rates.


EU-Digest