The republican lie about corporate tax rates

1. I reserve all rights to the term "cranky."
2. My question was Is the top statutory corporate tax rate typical of US corporations?
3. **** Finn.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

Given that KRB was Halliburton's engineering subsidiary, and given that you specified a unique competency in engineering (among other areas, several of which were KBR's bailiwick in Halliburton), you are contradicting yourself in claiming that pointing out KBR's failures does not call into question the unique competency you alleged. You're busted, and you won't accept and admit it. If KBR were uniquely competent, then the only unique competence they displayed in delivering gasoline in Iraq to the government was in the scale of over-charging, described by energy industry witnesses at congressional hearings as "outrageous" and "highway robbery." If KBR were uniquely competent, why did they get caught handing out bribes in Nigeria? The only unique competence shown there is the magnitude of their turpitude, which was the largest ever investigated by the SEC. If that was what you meant, i'm willing to stipulate that. If KBR were uniquely competent, why were they losing money for Halliburton, as alleged in the Business Week article? You were peddling bullshit, you got caught, and now you're trying to dance out of way . . .

. . . and you're attempting to discredit me on a personal basis in the process. I am neither irritable nor irascible. Contempt is not anger, challenging your sacred cows is not irritability. Pointing out the gross errors of your propagandistic screeds in favor of self-interested corporations, pointing out their duplicitous venality, is not evidence that i am either angry or irritated. Pointing out the inadequacy of your understanding of these things (and the alternative is to accuse you of lying outright) is not evidence of those states of mind, either. You are willing to call me a cranky critic or to accuse me of irritable irascibility because you wish to call into question my competence rather than to actually offer evidence to support your propaganda. You want to suggest that my objections are without substance so that you don't actually have to defend your ill-considered characterizations.

That is dishonest, both with regard to your statements, and with regard with an attempt to discredit me rhetorically rather than deal with my questions.

0 Replies

@georgeob1,

Georgeob1 wrote:

Your statistics are a bit out of context in that most "corporations" are more or less empty shells, having no revenues and no taxes either.

That doesn't refute Dys's case though, because he compares corporate taxes paid as a share of GDP. Unless you are saying that American corporations produce a much smaller share of America's GDP than the OECD average, and that the taxes actually paid are thus a higher percentage of the income earned, Dys's conclusion stands.

0 Replies

I will concede that Dyslexia here has primary rights to the term "cranky". That, of course, leaves me lacking a suitable term with which to describe Setanta's characteristic affliction. Aside from his expressed "contempt" for certain opinions I have expressed here (and the meanings of which he has distorted), I can see little beyond mere disagreement to rationalize what appears to be an excess of emotion relative to the issues being discussed here.

My reference to Haliburton's "unique" qualifications had to do with its extensive world-wide footprint, and particularly its already mobilized resources and capabilities in the Persian Gulf and the Mideast, as well as its financial and engineering/construction capabilities. That the company (like Seimens and many others) may have engaged in illicit payments to corrupt officials in countries like Nigeria is, frankly, immaterial.

Now, with respect to Thomas' point and Dys statistics on National corporate taxes expressed as a % of GDP, which Dys provided with very little in the way of contextual material or rationalization ---

GDP is gross domestic profit, the total economic value of all goods and services produced or provided in a country (or region). These goods and services can be produced by individual laborers, entrepreneurs or professionals; or by various associations of people in partnerships, collectives or other, less-than-corporate associations; and finally by legal corporations in any of their many forms and constructs.

The fraction of the GDP of a country produced by "corporations" is a salient missing element of this discussion and, more to the point, Dys' comparison. I'm not making any particular assertion about the relatice values of this fraction in any of the various (and unnamed) countries in Dys' list. However, I do note that this is not a universal constant.

Corporations pay taxes in many forms and to multiple elements of government. There are income taxes, excise taxes, real property taxes, payroll taxes, unemployment and disability taxes, and a host of specialized taxes ranging from special levies on things as far ranging as charges for the eventual disposal of hazardous waste; the processing of immigrant visas and many other things. It is not clear what taxes were included and excluded from the data Dys so blithely quoted without citation.

Moreover even something as simple as corporate income taxes, turns out to be not so simple at all. In this country corporations pay income taxes to the Federal government and to individual states. My company operated in the great majority of our states and its state income tax bill was about 21% of the Federal tax bill and 17.5% of the total. Were state income taxes included in Dys' statistics??? I doubt it very much.

To cite merely one example, payroll taxes add about 8% to the direct cost of labor in this country -- this amounts to anywhere from 2% to 5% of total revenues for most companies. In several developed countries social pensions are paid by governmentsd from general revenues, in effect, included in the income tax.

There are a host of other differences. Developed countries vary considerably in how they treat income earned in foreign subsidiaries - some tax it others do not. A very prominent difference is that the nominal corporate Federal tax rate here (35% of taxable income) is much higher here than in nearly all developed countries: add about 7% for state income taxes and the difference is higher still.

1 Reply

What is not immaterial is that, one, Halliburton is not the only such corporation with a "global footprint," two, that Halliburton was the only company for which a member of the administration--the Vice President--was a former executive officer, and, three, that KRB was the engineering subsidiary of Halliburton, and the only "unique competency" which KBR has displayed is a breathtaking ability to screw the pooch.

I didn't allege that they were incompetent, but you, O'George, alleged that they were uniquely competent, and you have failed to provide any evidence that this is true, all you have offered is ipse dixit.

Dys asked to how many corporations your dictum about the alleged "very high" taxes which are paid applies to. Your response was a paean to Halliburton as though the sun shone out of their collective corporate ass. You offered nothing more than your statement from authority, while disparaging Dys' statistics, and inferentially ridiculing anyone who doesn't agree with your point of view as naïve.

When it comes to being a shill for corporate propaganda, O'George, few here are more naïve than are you.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

What is not immaterial is that, one, Halliburton is not the only such corporation with a "global footprint," two, that Halliburton was the only company for which a member of the administration--the Vice President--was a former executive officer, and, three, that KRB was the engineering subsidiary of Halliburton, and the only "unique competency" which KBR has displayed is a breathtaking ability to screw the pooch.

I didn't allege that they were incompetent, but you, O'George, alleged that they were uniquely competent, and you have failed to provide any evidence that this is true, all you have offered is ipse dixit.

Dys asked to how many corporations your dictum about the alleged "very high" taxes which are paid applies to. Your response was a paean to Halliburton as though the sun shone out of their collective corporate ass. You offered nothing more than your statement from authority, while disparaging Dys' statistics, and inferentially ridiculing anyone who doesn't agree with your point of view as naïve.

When it comes to being a shill for corporate propaganda, O'George, few here are more naïve than are you.

When you get down to specifics, there were very few companies indeed that met the DOD requirements for the LOGCAP contract awarded to KBR for mobilization support in the Persian Gulf. In the first place the competition, for security reasons, was restricted to U.S. corporations. In the second, several of our other large engineering/construction corporations were not at the time interested in this type of contract & didn't bid -- URS is a notable example. At the end of the day it was down to Bechtel, Fluor, KBR, and perhaps the Louis Berger group. Among them KBR had by far the best qualifications.

With respect to the tax issue, I offered a rational, fact-based discussion - much of it based on my own experience and direct knowledge, but all readily verifiable. Hardly a fiat from the gods and none of it propaganda.

Your rejoinder above, however, is notable for its absence of specifics and supporting fact. Instead it employs entirely unsupported attacks on the motive and competency of your interlocutor.

2 Replies

@georgeob1,

You just make this **** up as you go along, don't you O'George. The competition wasn't limited for security reasons, it was limited to those nations which were willing to send troops to the party. Your capacity for self-delusion is breathtaking.

You still fail to show that Halliburton-KBR has displayed a unique competence. You continue to ignore the glaring examples of their failure to show a unique competence.

You won't let that stop you, though, will you O'George? You're obsessive with this conservative capitalist propaganda bullshit . . .

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

Quote:

Your rejoinder above, however, is notable for its absence of specifics and supporting fact. Instead it employs entirely unsupported attacks on the motive and competency of your interlocutor.

This is incredible hypocrisy. You have never yet provided a single source for the horseshit you've been peddling, i have quoted and linked several articles, and can go get many more. I was careful to limit it to reputable sources, and conservative sources when i could find them.

You are the one who started the name calling, and yet i have never yet referred to you in unflattering terms, with the exception of describing you as a shill for corporate propaganda. The way to avoid that sort of thing is not to do it in the first place.

Hypocrite.

0 Replies

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

You just make this **** up as you go along, don't you O'George. The competition wasn't limited for security reasons, it was limited to those nations which were willing to send troops to the party. Your capacity for self-delusion is breathtaking.

No the LOGCAP contract to which I specifically referred was put into place long before our intervention in Iraq started and the bidding was restricted, just as I stated. Indeed KBR had held even a previous iteration of this contract.

0 Replies

@georgeob1,

I guess you think if you throw enough **** around no one will notice you are doing nothing but heaping up a pile of crap.

GDP - Gross domestic PRODUCT not profit.
Why is the % produced by corporations a salient point? Are you saying the US has substantially fewer corporations per GDP than other nations? Do you have evidence of this?

A simple google search shows that the 2.2% figure includes state and federal corporate "income" taxes. You do understand what an "income" tax is, don't you? Dys stated it was corporate "income" tax in his first post. Bringing up all the other forms of taxation means nothing unless you want to include VAT taxes for businesses in OECD countries as well. The total tax rate as % of GDP appears to be much higher for those countries because of those other taxes.

http://www.taxanalysts.com/www/features.nsf/Articles/FE9DCA58402875D7852573680064DA50?OpenDocument

2 Replies

You have still failed to show KBR's "unique competency," O'George.

0 Replies

http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/12/news/economy/corporate_taxes/

Quote:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Nearly two-thirds of U.S. companies and 68% of foreign corporations do not pay federal income taxes, according to a congressional report released Tuesday.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) examined samples of corporate tax returns filed between 1998 and 2005. In that time period, an annual average of 1.3 million U.S. companies and 39,000 foreign companies doing business in the United States paid no income taxes - despite having a combined $2.5 trillion in revenue.

The study showed that 28% of foreign companies and 25% of U.S. corporations with more than $250 million in assets or $50 million in sales paid no federal income taxes in 2005. Those companies totaled a combined $372 billion in sales for the largest foreign companies and $1.1 trillion in revenue for the biggest U.S. companies.

Dys is right, it's just another crock of **** lie from the Republicans.

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

@parados,

parados wrote:

GDP - Gross domestic PRODUCT not profit.
Why is the % produced by corporations a salient point?

Because it makes the taxes on corporate profits comparable across countries. If you take corporate profits, as a percentage GDP, as the tax base, and corporate taxes paid, as a percentage of GDP, as a measure of the tax load, you have an apples-to-apples comparison.

And George is right: the lack of apples-to-apples-ness harms the point in Dys's initial point as much as his.

0 Replies

@parados,

parados wrote:

I guess you think if you throw enough **** around no one will notice you are doing nothing but heaping up a pile of crap.

GDP - Gross domestic PRODUCT not profit.
Why is the % produced by corporations a salient point? Are you saying the US has substantially fewer corporations per GDP than other nations? Do you have evidence of this?

A simple google search shows that the 2.2% figure includes state and federal corporate "income" taxes. You do understand what an "income" tax is, don't you? Dys stated it was corporate "income" tax in his first post. Bringing up all the other forms of taxation means nothing unless you want to include VAT taxes for businesses in OECD countries as well. The total tax rate as % of GDP appears to be much higher for those countries because of those other taxes.

http://www.taxanalysts.com/www/features.nsf/Articles/FE9DCA58402875D7852573680064DA50?OpenDocument

It is interesting to note the inverse relationship between the emotion and occasional vitriol that accompanies some of these posts and their informational and intellectual content.

I do understand Income Tax quite well thank you. Sales and VAT taxes are merely added to the cost of goods sold/services provided. They are paid by the consumer, not the corporate provider. Payroll taxes, however, in the United States represent a significant element of corporate taxation that is often (not always) included in the Income Tax paid by corporations in other countries.

I read the rather elementary paper you linked in your post.

The most significant element noted in the article reducing the average "corporate" income tax is something to which I referred in my original post -- most "corporations" in this country (and most others as well) are not subject to income taxes at all. Joint ventures, Limited liability Companies, S Corporations, and Partnerships are the most prominent examples. However the profits or proceeds of such corporations are all taxed at the usual personal (or corporate if the owner is a corporation) income tax rate. Whereas the dividends paid to owners of an income tax paying corporation are taxed at the lower qualified dividend rate. Either way the federal and State government tax take is about the same. This important point illustrates the folly involved in examining "corporate" taxed separately from others.

There are many restrictions on the use of LLCs, S Corporations, Joint ventures and the rest, and significant tradeoffs involved. JV Partners and ownwers of LLCs are individually and severally liable for all the obligations of the enterprise. The S corporation is available only for companies wholly owned by employees. There is more....

The paper also suggests that American corporations may be more efficiently structured and capitalized to reduce their tax burdens than their counterparts in other countries. The author suggests this is why on average American corporations use more debt in their capital structures than their European counterparts for example. While corporate debt has recently been greater here, I seriously doubt that the explanation is as simple as that. In the first place the greed, intelligence and desire to avoid taxation of (say) British, French, german, Swiss and Japanese corporate managers is every bit as great as that of Americans. This strikes me as merely a counter intiuitive and somewhat simple minded leap to a preconceived explanation.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

So you are agreeing with Dys that republicans lie about corporate taxes?

2 Replies

@parados,

parados wrote:

So you are agreeing with Dys that republicans lie about corporate taxes?

No. My point was that you clearly don't understand the reality of them, and, perhaps as a result, fall victim to wrongheaded conclusions apparently based on a remarkably superficial examination and consideration of the facts associated with them.

I never agree with Dys as a matter of personal pride and policy. Worse, I like him and know that If I were to agree he would be sorely disappointed.

0 Replies

@parados,

As an afterthought --
The economic activities of government in the United States are a good deal smaller relative to the total economy than what prevails throughout Europe and in many or most of the states in Dys' original comparison. Based on this alone, it should not surprise any thinking person that tax collections in any broad category here (corporate or individual) should be a smaller relative portion of the GDP than obtains elsewhere.

There are many other reasons to doubt the very great leap implicit in the conclusions and arguments of the anti republican polemicists on this thread. I outlined the main ones in my earlier posts.

If the proposition being argued here is that U.S. corporations should pay more in taxes - either through tougher enforcement or higher tax rates - there are other, far better ways to make the argument. That however would require some thought, research and, as well, some formidable counterarguments to overcome. Apparently some find it easier to grab weakly related statistics out of the air and use them without even the pretext of context to create the illusion of conspiracy on the part of their opponents and certainty among their co-illusionists.

2 Replies

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

As an afterthought --
The economic activities of government in the United States are a good deal smaller relative to the total economy than what prevails throughout Europe and in many or most of the states in Dys' original comparison. Based on this alone, it should not surprise any thinking person that tax collections in any broad category here (corporate or individual) should be a smaller relative portion of the GDP than obtains elsewhere.

There are many other reasons to doubt the very great leap implicit in the conclusions and arguments of the anti republican polemicists on this thread. I outlined the main ones in my earlier posts.

If the proposition being argued here is that U.S. corporations should pay more in taxes - either through tougher enforcement or higher tax rates - there are other, far better ways to make the argument. That however would require some thought, research and, as well, some formidable counterarguments to overcome. Apparently some find it easier to grab weakly related statistics out of the air and use them without even the pretext of context to create the illusion of conspiracy on the part of their opponents and certainty among their co-illusionists.

Sort of like the CNN article I posted, with numbers? Like this paragraph?

Quote:

The study showed that 28% of foreign companies and 25% of U.S. corporations with more than $250 million in assets or $50 million in sales paid no federal income taxes in 2005. Those companies totaled a combined $372 billion in sales for the largest foreign companies and $1.1 trillion in revenue for the biggest U.S. companies.

How do a quarter of all companies with more than 250mil in assets not pay any federal income tax at all, if Corporate income tax rates are too high here in the states?

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

You have provided us with an excellent example of the mindless misuse of statistics to infer a meaningless conclusion.

Corporations pay income tax on their profits, not on their sales or assets. Moreover, as has been exhaustively discussed here, many corporations are not subject to a corporate income tax at all because any profits they realize are directly taxed as ordinary income (generally at a higher than corporate rate) by their owners, who with such corporations do not enjoy the liability limitations that apply to types of corporations that do pay income tax. (Variations of these arrangements also exist in the tax law of other modern countries, and your meaningless inference could be made about them as well.)

2 Replies

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

You have provided us with an excellent example of the mindless misuse of statistics to infer a meaningless conclusion.

Corporations pay income tax on their profits, not on their sales or assets. Moreover, as has been exhaustively discussed here, many corporations are not subject to a corporate income tax at all because any profits they realize are directly taxed as ordinary income (generally at a higher than corporate rate) by their owners, who with such corporations do not enjoy the liability limitations that apply to types of corporations that do pay income tax. (Variations of these arrangements also exist in the tax law of other modern countries, and your meaningless inference could be made about them as well.)

Nice try, but that doesn't completely address the paragraph.

How many corporations with assets larger than 250 mil tax their profits as 'ordinary income?' This seems very unlikely to me and I'd love to see the examples of this. I understand that there are many small Corporations who do what you say, but large ones with large amounts of assets?

How much profit did they make on over a trillion dollars in sales?

Surely a reasonable amount. Why are they not paying taxes on that amount?

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

The republican lie about corporate tax rates

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know