Corporate free ride gets bigger

Sep 27, 2004

Grandstanding for the voters, Congressmen said they wanted to help the middle class, and passed an extension of last year's tax cuts.

While last year's tax-cut law provided a few barely-noticed dollars to some poor and working families, that law mainly put millions into corporate bottom lines. Extending the law did even more to help companies evade taxes – hidden behind their babble about helping the "middle class," the Congressmen voted for more than 20 different business tax cuts.

Boardrooms around the country could celebrate anew. From 2001 to 2003, pre-tax corporate profit rose 26 per cent – but corporate tax payments fell by 21 per cent! More of the same is now guaranteed, for the wealthy.

A study, Corporate Income Taxes in the Bush Years, done by Citizens for Tax Justice, found that big companies can legally hide half of their profits even before they begin to calculate the taxes they might owe. Then the tax breaks are so immense that, for example, 28 companies with combined profits of 45 billion dollars paid no taxes whatsoever between 2001 and 2003.

That's really adding insult to injury.