Tax Season is Almost Upon Us--But Just You and Me Because Corporations Do Not Pay Taxes

GE had $10.3 billion in pretax income, but paid NOTHING to Uncle Sam. Exxon Mobil had $45.2 billion PROFIT, paid none of it to the IRS. Corp tax shelter tricks shift a $100 billion annual tax burden onto US taxpayers. In 2008 the GAO found that “2 out of every 3 US corps paid NO federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005."

I know the argument from the Right about "oh they create jobs and if yuo tax them they'll hire fewer people or increase the prices on their products." But guess what, when you tax the common worker he can't buy as much so the corps sell less and that causes corps to make less. You must tax someone, so why is always joe six pack who has to pay the tax adn not the mega-corp?

This is how anti-tax Republicans are, at least for corporations. They literally think that even when corps pay ZERO taxes, the corps are being taxed too much.

At the Tea Party summit last weekend, THINKPROGRESS spoke to former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), a prospective GOP presidential candidate, about corporate tax cheats. Asked about Bank of America, another wildly profitable American bank that paid nothing in corporate taxes in 2009, Pawlenty simply relied “Well actually the corporate tax rate in Minnesota and around the country is too high.” Reminded several times that Bank of America doesn’t pay it’s corporate taxes, regardless of rates, Pawlenty said that both exemptions and rates should be lowered. However, he again emphasized that he was not troubled, or even aware, of corporate tax dodging, and that corporate tax rates should be reduced:

FANG: Governor, today liberals are demonstrating all over the country in what CBS has called a liberal version of the Tea Party. Their main complaint is that a lot of corporations aren’t paying their fair share. For example, Bank of America, in 2009 paid nothing in corporate income taxes, same with ExxonMobil, GE, and a lot of other big corporations. Do you think corporations like Bank of America should pay their fair share? What are your thoughts on that?

PAWLENTY: Well actually the corporate tax rate in Minnesota and around the country is too high. And I think one thing we could and should do is–

FANG: You think zero is too high with Bank of America paying nothing?

PAWLENTY: We have the highest corporate tax rate, or one of them, in the world–

FANG: But they use loopholes and offshore bank accounts to pay nothing.

PAWLENTY: The things I’ve called for is reducing tax rates and looking at exemptions or special deals within the tax code that give certain companies privileges or benefits. I can’t speak individually to any country, company would get in that regard, but I think one goal or direction is to simplify and reduce tax rates and clean out as many of the special deals as possible.

FANG: To be clear, do you think Bank of America pays too much in taxes already?

PAWLENTY: I don’t know what Bank of America pays in taxes. I’ll just say, setting aside Bank of America, the corporate tax rate in America is too high compared to our competitor nations.

Watch the video here:http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/02/pawlenty-bofa-taxes/