Banned TED Talk: Nick Hanauer "Rich people don't create jobs". For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions. Photo WASHINGTON — The hedge fund magnates Daniel S.
Loeb, Louis Moore Bacon and have much in common. They have managed billions of dollars in capital, earning vast fortunes. They have invested large sums in art — and millions more in political candidates. Moreover, each has exploited an esoteric tax loophole that saved them millions in taxes. With inequality at its highest levels in nearly a century and public debate rising over whether the government should respond to it through higher taxes on the wealthy, the very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes. In recent years, this apparatus has become one of the most powerful avenues of influence for wealthy Americans of all political stripes, including Mr.
Decline. » The Stealing of America by the Cops, the Courts, the Corporations and Congress Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind! What is July 4th to US Imperialism? What is it to the Oppressed? What does America’s national celebration mean to those under the heel of “Manifest Destiny,” at home and abroad?
“For the victims of US imperialism, the 4th of July is indeed a ‘hollow mockery’ and ‘mere bombast, fraud, and deception’ as Frederick Douglass so eloquently put it in his famous speech.” “The Declaration of Independence implicitly legalized the enslavement of Black people and the genocide of Native people within the context of the developing American capitalist nation-state.” July 4th is once again approaching and principled left forces need to use the day as a teaching moment. In a speech given on July 4th, 1852, Frederick Douglas spoke before a packed Rochester Hall and did just that, highlighting the hypocrisy that stains the July 4th celebration of the American Declaration of Independence. Liberty, independence, and equality are abstract ideas. This is the type of ”liberty” that is celebrated annually every 4th of July. “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Charles Murray on our increasingly stratified society. Corporations and the Top 0.1 Percent. New research finds that richest 0.1 percent of Americans have dramatically expanded their share of the country's overall wealth in the last three decades.
The study finds that the top one-tenth of the country's wealthiest 1 percent has doubled its share of the pie from about 10 percent between 1940-1980 to over 20 percent in 2013. The analysis, highlighted on the economics blog House of Debt, was conducted by Emmanuel Saez of UC Berkeley and Gabriel Zucman of UC Berkeley and the London School of Economics, who accompanied their findings with charts. Budget pain? Not for millionaires who pay no tax. Illustration: Andrew Dyson.
“Pain all round” will be the rallying cry of the night. Joe Hockey says his first budget - tonight - will hit everyone from high earners to politicians to Australians too poor to pay to see the doctor. All of us will have to “contribute budget repair”. Except that we won’t. The latest tax statistics show 75 ultra-high-earning Australians paid no tax at all in 2011-12.
Advertisement Each earned more than $1 million from investments or wages. The fortunate 75 paid no income tax, no Medicare levy and no Medicare surcharge, even though 60 of them had private health insurance. The reason? Cutting taxable income that far doesn’t come cheap. Corporate Profits Grow and Wages Slide. CORPORATE profits are at their highest level in at least 85 years.
Employee compensation is at the lowest level in 65 years. The Commerce Department last week estimated that corporations earned $2.1 trillion during 2013, and paid $419 billion in corporate taxes. Google Doesn't Want You To Google This. Google gets its tax bill slashed despite earning millions in local profits.
Google initially received a tax bill of $7.1 million for the year ending December, but only $466,802 will be paid.
Photo: Virginia Mayo Google has cut its taxes in Australia to $466,802 despite almost doubling its local profit to $46.5 million. Google pays little tax while Commission of audit goes after poor. Illustration: Michael Mucci.
It is no small irony that the very day the Commission of Audit report was released this week so too were the accounts for Google Australia. Once again, the tech company has paid virtually no tax. They spun it as a 15 per cent tax rate; a bill of $7 million on a profit of $46 million. After deductions, though, the amount paid was just $466,802.
Google's real profit - mostly booked in more amenable tax jurisdictions - is many times what it declared. So we have multinationals paying minimal tax, massive government waste, a constellation of tax lurks for the wealthy, and taxpayer-backed banks racking up super profits. No wonder they were all smiling when it was released.