| |
 |
Thursday, November 23, 2006 |
The rich have every reason to be thankful for their wealth.
The bottom 90% of taxpayers had a 2% increase in income from 1990 to 2004, the top 1% an increase of 57%, and the top 0.1% an increase of 85%.
Hallelujah!
6:24:03 PM 
|
|
ICH: "The biggest tax scam on earth has a very innocent sounding name. It is called 'transfer prices'. That almost sounds boring. It is, however, anything but boring. Abuse of transfer prices is a key tool multinational corporations use to fool the U.S. and other jurisdictions to think that they have virtually no profit; hence, they shouldn't pay any taxes.
Corporations involved in this scam are 'model corporate citizens', or so they would like us to believe. The truth is that they rob us all blind. The money we lose can be estimated in the tens of billions, or possibly hundreds of billions of dollars every year. We all end up paying higher taxes because rich corporations make sure they don't.
A few weeks ago U.K.-based GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, together with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced that GSK will pay $3.4 billion to the IRS to settle a transfer pricing dispute dating back 17 years. The IRS alleges that GSK improperly shifted profits from their U.S. to the U.K. entity.
And U.K. pharmaceutical companies are not alone with these kinds of problems. Merck, one of the largest U.S. drug companies, also this month disclosed that they face four separate tax disputes in the U.S. and Canada with potential liabilities of $5.6 billion. Out of that amount, Merck disclosed that the Canada Revenue Agency issued the company a notice for $1.8 billion in back taxes and interest 'related to certain inter-company pricing matters'. And according to the IRS, one of the schemes Merck used to cheat American tax payers was by setting up a subsidiary in tax-friendly Bermuda. Merck then quietly transferred patents for several blockbuster drugs to the new subsidiary and then paid the subsidiary for use of the patents. The arrangement in effect allowed some of the profits to disappear into Merck's own 'Bermuda triangle'.
For companies in certain businesses, such as pharmaceuticals, it is very easy to simply 'invent' the price a company charges their U.S. business for buying the company's product which they manufacture in another country. And if they charge enough, poof; all the profit vanishes from the US, or Canada, or any other regular jurisdiction and end up in a corporate tax-haven. And that means American and Canadian tax payers don't get their fair share.
In the end, multinational corporations live in a global world which allows them to pretty much send their money to corporate tax havens at will, and then repatriate this money almost tax free, with the help of the U.S. Congress."
There is no such thing as a 'free market', everything in our economy is manipulated by the neocons in power, whose only aim is to profit and make the citizen pay for the neocon pollution, exploitation of resources and destruction of our climate and habitat.
12:50:30 PM
|
|
AfterDowningStreet: "According to credible Iraqi sources in London and Amman, a secret story of America's diplomatic exit strategy from Iraq is rapidly unfolding."
I have my doubts about that. What the US is after is shifting the burden to the Iraqi forces. They will only leave Iraq when forced militarily, like in Vietnam. The US will not give up its aim to create an axis of evil (or oil) from Syria to Afghanistan.
12:38:33 PM
|
|
ArmyTimes: "The Pentagon has extended its timeline to destroy its aging chemical weapons arsenal until 2023, despite concerns by Congress and watchdog groups that the stockpiles raise the risk of an accident or theft by terrorists."
Now that the Pentagon can't sell them to Saddam Hussein any longer, they may come in handy to combat the Democrats in the Homeland, is probably their reasoning, or to poison Russian ex-KGB spies.
12:31:29 PM
|
|
EUObserver:"The Netherlands faces difficult coalition talks and potential complications for its position on the EU stage after Wednesday's elections saw huge gains for leftists and the far-right, with prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende scoring a victory over Labour.
Labour lost a shock number of ten seats - primarily to the leftist Socialist Party which jumped hugely from nine to 26 seats and which is broadly identified as the real victor of Wednesday's poll."
It is clear the electorate has made a choice not for New Labour (PvdA) but for the Socialist Party (SP). The neocon VVD has lost its third place in Dutch politics to the SP. A new government should be a social government, that much is clear.
However, Prime-Minister Balkenende is already wriggling and squirming like an eel. It is obvious he will do everything to prevent a leftist government. Balkenende has in the past lied about Iraq and lied about Afghanistan. He still has to face a parliamentary inquiry into the illegal 'interrogation practices' of the Dutch army in Iraq. His Harry Potter charm is the only appeal he has on part of the Dutch electorate.
12:21:37 PM
|
|
© Copyright 2008.
|
|
|
|
|
