The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Corporations Avoid Paying Taxes—And It’s Legal

May 19, 2008

Kellogg Brown & Root, KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, is the largest contractor in Iraq, rolling up at least 16 billion dollars in contracts during this war. Today it has more than 21,000 employees in Iraq.

So KBR must be paying a nice little sum in employment taxes to Social Security and Medicare, right? Wrong! It didn’t pay a cent.

KBR set up two shell companies incorporated in the Caymans, tiny islands in the Caribbean! And the Caymans don’t recognize U.S. tax laws.

Employees of the subsidiary will have no money paid into Social Security, meaning they will get less money when they are old enough to retire. But KBR is pocketing one hundred million dollars a year.

KBR didn’t see why it should pay any U.S. taxes. After all, they have their man Dick Cheney sitting in the vice president’s chair.