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President Joe Biden has decried the current tax structure that enables 55 of America’s richest and most successful companies to pay no income tax and has promised that his tax reform plan, now working its way through Congress, will plug that hole.
The list of so-called “zero tax” companies, compiled by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, includes DTE Energy, Sealed Air Corp., and VeriSign; until recently, Amazon also was on the list.
However, there still will be zero-tax corporations even if the current bill becomes law, several analysts told The Wall Street Journal.
The proposed plan would boost the highest corporate income tax rate from its current 21 percent to 26.5 percent and cut incentives for companies to book profits in low-tax foreign countries.
However, the bill does nothing to reduce corporate deductions for accelerated depreciation of investments or expenses for research development, two of the main write-offs that corporations use to negate their tax liability.
The current proposal also does not include the idea of a minimum income tax that would require all companies to pay at least something.
In addition, the bill includes new credits for green energy and low-income housing, designed in a way that could let businesses use those venues to avoid taxes.
“Corporations that don’t pay any taxes are still going to be able to go on paying no taxes and, in some ways, might even be able to get a bigger refund,” Frank Clemente, executive director of the nonprofit Americans for Tax Fairness, told the WSJ.
The bill Congress has in hand chooses to allow some zero-tax companies in exchange for rewarding those that engage in activities Democrats see as socially beneficial, the WSJ noted.
“It is remarkable that there is no talk about this in Congress,” Clemente said.
TRENDPOST: As we have been reporting for decades, the Bigs get a free tax ride while the Little People of Slavelandia are taxed the fullest. We also noted in last week’s Trends Journal that “AMERICA’S RICHEST 400 FAMILIES PAY A TINY PERCENT OF FEDERAL INCOME TAX COMPARED TO THE WORKING CLASS.”
And, despite President Donald Trump’s bullshit that his 2017 tax cuts would be “helping the folks who work in the mailrooms and the machine shops of America, and “The plumbers, the carpenters, the cops, the teachers, the truck drivers, the pipe-fitters, the people that like me best… as we reported, 82 percent of President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts enriched the one percent according the Tax Policy Center.