Corporations Behind ‘WinAmerica’ Tax Holiday Campaign Already Pay Extremely Low Taxes

[cal04]

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/24/winamerica-low-taxes/

As we’ve been documenting, several multinational corporations (along with their Republican allies) have been pushing Congress to enact a tax repatriation holiday, allowing them to bring money they have stashed offshore back to the U.S. at a dramatically lower tax rate. Usually, money brought back to the U.S. is subject to the statutory corporate tax rate of 35 percent.

The corporations pushing for a tax holiday claim that it will allow them to bring funds into the U.S. that they will invest in domestic operations and job creation. However, Congress approved a repatriation holiday in 2004, only to see companies use the money to line their executives’ pockets. The holiday also encouraged corporations to stash more money overseas, because they figured they could sucker Congress into approving holidays over and over.

The White House, as well as some leading Republicans on the relevant tax committees, have thrown cold water on the tax holiday idea. Not to be deterred, a group of corporations, have launched a new website — WinAmerica — to try to convince policymakers of the wisdom of another holiday. It includes pictures of smiling workers and extols the supposed virtues such a tax holiday would provide.

However, many of the corporate supporters behind the WinAmerica campaign already use the various loopholes and giveaways in the corporate tax code to drastically lower their corporate tax rate. Here’s what these companies begging for a new corporate tax cut currently pay in corporate income taxes:


Corporation Effective Tax Rate*
Apple 25%
Broadcom 1.4%
Cisco 19.8%
Cognizant 16%
Google 2.4%
Microsoft 25%
Pfizer 17.1%
Oracle 27.1%
Qualcomm 20%

[geardaddy]

1. Their prize will be a destitute nation.

[DenverDad]

2. Geez! How much is "enough" for them?

They line their pockets while America burns. Is our misery how they "keep score"?