They truly have no shame:
Over a four years period from 2008 to 2011, Corning Inc. was one of 26 companies that managed to avoid paying any American income taxes, even though it earned nearly $3 billion during that time. In fact, according to Citizens For Tax Justice, the company received a $4 million refund from 2008 to 2010. That didn’t stop Susan Ford, a senior executive at the company, from telling the House Ways and Means Committee this week that America’s high corporate tax rate was putting her company at a disadvantage:
American manufacturers are at a distinct disadvantage to competitors headquartered in other countries. Specifically, foreign manufacturers uniformly face a lower corporate tax rate than U.S. manufacturers, and virtually all operate under territorial systems which encourage investment both abroad and at home.
Ford told the committee that Corning paid an effective tax rate of 36 percent in 2011, but as CTJ notes, she is counting taxes on profits earned overseas that haven’t yet been paid and won’t be unless the company decides to bring the money back to the United States. Corning’s actual tax rate in 2011, according to CTJ’s analysis, was actually negative 0.2 percent.
(via Thinkprogress)
I wrote about this newest tax meme being spread by the right a few days ago. Once again, they’ll not stop until they get what they want and once again, it’s a tax plan designed to move money upward . It would bring us into line with a number of other countries, which only tax corporate profits earned within their borders. Except it wouldn't really, because it lacks the safeguards other countries have implemented to prevent tax avoidance. Naturally, it's a centerpiece of Romney’s tax plan. The US does, in fact, have a high nominal corporate tax rate. But, in typical American fashion, it has a low effective corporate tax rate (as the Corning example proves) by dint of the generous loopholes that corporations are able to buy so cheaply from Congress. It’s actually quite convenient for them, as it gives them something about which they can endlessly complain, secure in the knowledge that the corporate media will never bother to call them out about it, giving them cover from within which they can lobby for ever more ways to shift their low remaining real tax burden to the American people.
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