Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Fix the Damn Tax Code

I can't stand this any more.  I have to speak out.

Senators Levin and McCain are yelling at Apple because they don't think it pays enough taxes, and it has "offshore entities" that have "no legal residence for tax purposes."

Everything Apple did was LEGAL under the U.S. Tax Code.

The Senate Finance Committee is freaking out at the IRS because of the way it audited some Tea Party "social welfare" organizations, trying to find out if they were doing enough political lobbying to invalidate their tax-exempt status.

Nothing I've seen suggests anything more than an overzealous first-line IRS employee trying to establish the rules for a legal entity that shouldn't exist anyhow.

All you congresspersons and senators trying to make publicity points out there:  YOU wrote the tax code.  Most of you have been in office for at least 20 years.  You built this mess.  Now you're complaining that you don't like it.

Well, go and fix it.  You, Congressmen and Senators, are the only people who can fix the tax code, but instead of doing some actual work (negotiating what a tax code ought to look like, for instance), you'd rather sit around and yell publicly about the awfulness of corporate tax evasion.

The tax code is what it is because Your Corporate Masters told you they wanted all those loopholes - and you obediently set the loopholes up.  Why else would the tax code allow corporations to stash money overseas and not pay tax on it?

The whole 501(c)(4) tax entity exists because some large donors wanted a way to collect tax-exempt money, without revealing their donors, and still be able to do some political organizing as long as they could say it "wasn't the primary activity."  And the Tea Party groups wanted to set them up because political organizing is their primary activity; it's what the Tea Party does.  Tell me one real piece of "social welfare" work any 501(c)(4) organization has done.  When I see one of them running a soup kitchen I'll believe the "social welfare" bunk.  For that group.

So, outraged Senators and Representatives, until you fix what's wrong with the tax code, I don't want to hear one more word out of you about the awfulness of corporate tax evasion or the terrible abuse the IRS heaped on the poor Tea Party.

3 comments:

  1. (Melinda) Ann1:18 PM

    Yes on both issues--absolutely! I wish a Democratic leader would stand up at the IRS hearings and say "This is bullshit." No exclamation mark, because it's just a statement of fact. (Well, metaphor--but you know what I mean.)

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  2. Oh, I missed this one when you posted it. My FB "Like" is for both.

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  3. Tax cheating is one reason our nation's budget is in trouble.

    That, and oversea-ing our jobs. And the pointless wars. And the Bush tax cuts. And the financial meltdown caused by lax regulation.

    Big business knows that the best way to get breaks and freebies is to threaten to leave. Corporate America is also sitting on a couple of trillion dollars in cash, "waiting on the sidelines" as the current wisdom goes, for the right "opportunity."

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