Office Max Inc. seeking more Corporate Tax Dodging Laws

Corporations love the fact that Conservatives and Liberals battle over abortion because it allows them to control the Government.

While people focus elsewhere Corporate Boards and CEOs lobby, cajole, pressure and bully local, State and the Federal Government to write into law any number of loop-holes and tax deferments to aid the Corporations in avoiding paying their fair share of taxes.

Corporations don't "succeed" these days by rewarding their workers or by efficiency or superior products but by legerdermain and lobbying.

Office Max Inc. mergered with Office Depot now the new company, with an estimated yearly revenue of $18 Billion is looking towards playing Illinois and Florida against one another to see which State will offer them the best tax avoidance loopholes.

Illinois State Senator Thomas Cullerton has offered up Illinois House Bill 3271 which would allow Office Max to claim at least $30 Million in tax credits over 10 years against withheld employee income taxes.

Thus, Workers Pay Taxes Corporations Don't.

There's been a lot of bullshit rhetoric by economists that U.S. Corporate Tax Rates are too high.

"The lower the tax rate, the less incentive there is for companies to engage in sophisticated gamesmanship to get around the rate," argues Victor Fleischer, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School.

The economists making the argument are Corporatists through and through. Claiming that is that since the Corporations are going to cheat, buy politicians and illegally influence laws well we should give into them and allow them their way.

These Corporatists claim the lower Corporate rate and tax free repatriation holiday may entice Company's to bring the money back to the U.S. Of course, this is just the Race-to-the-Bottom that Corporations love. Because creating lower rates will just create a new round of tax avoidance, of loop hole creation and the adoption of a lower tax rate cycle.

Ultimately what Corporations want is to have a Zero Tax Rate on Corporate Earnings while their Wage Slaves cover the costs of which benefit them.

Thomas Cullerton claims Illinois' strengths as a transportation hub with a well-educated workforce will entice Office Max/Office Depot into moving it's Corporate HQ to Illinois. But, how is that transportation network and educated workforce being maintained?

In Illinois, 15 bridges are in "critical" need of repair across the six collar county Chicago metropolitan area, and nearly 300 more are considered structurally deficient, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT). This Daily Herald Story has Zero Comments despite the story's claim that, 317 of the 3,759 bridges in the six counties that IDOT lists as "structurally deficient," where one of the three main components of the bridge — the driving surface, horizontal supports and vertical supports — is rated as being in poor or worse condition by inspectors.

Additionally, as we've seen with the Chicago Public School System. The reason the Schools are underfunded is because of Corporate Tax Dodging which Office Max wishes for themselves has received in the past and which other Corporations in Illinois; such as Sears Holdings Corp., Navistar International Corp., Ford Motor Company and Motorola Mobility, have profited off of in the past.

Information like this are glossed over because the blinkered anti-taxers have a truncated view of taxes. You didn't build that was more accurate than most people want to give President Obama credit. 

But, hey actually delving into the matter of responsibility for the crumbling infrastructure and broken education system requires more thought than mindlessly blaming the Evil Government or Greedy Union Thugs.

And thus Corporations continue to sidestep their fair share.

Remember the Economic Reform we need is Tax Reform and the Sadism of Capitalists

"How much more money do we want to steal from the American people to fund more government? I'm for no more." Speaker of the House John Boehner, tells America that the "People's House" will impose taxes on Real People which they'll give to Corporate "Persons".

 Capitalism is more correctly understood as Neo-Feudalism. Great Houses and Barons have morphed into Corporations and CEOs. And for Neo-Feudalism to flourish there needs to be a vast majority of workers for whom there is no future other than toil and labor and who'll give birth to the next generation of labor.

The Economic Reform we need is Tax Reform. 1 in 4 Corporations pays no Income Taxes. Companies involved in the Military-Industrial-Complex fraudulently overcharge the military Hundreds of Billions of dollars, Oil Companies receive government subsidies and transfer the clean-up costs on their disasterous oil spills onto the American taxpayers.

Procter & Gamble, the Cincinnati-based company behind Pampers diapers and Tide detergent, reported a federal tax burden in 1969 that was 40 percent of its total profits, a typical rate in those days. More than four decades later, P&G is a very different company, with operations that span the globe. It also reports paying a very different portion of its profits in federal taxes: 15 percent.

Apple is the current in the spotlight for their Tax Dodging schemes. Apple in 1980 created a shell company in Ireland, "Waldwill Limited". Now, Apple doesn't make anything in Ireland these days, it's Cork Office is in charge of European distrubtion and product support. But, it is a handy dandy country to funnel the $30,000,000,000 USC in profits in order to pay $0 US Income Taxes.

Proctor and Gamble and Apple aren't the only ones. Most of the 30 companies listed on the country’s most famous stock index, the Dow Jones industrial average, have seen a dramatically smaller percentage of their profits go to U.S. coffers over time, even as their share prices have driven the Dow to an all-time high.

That is what is going on here. Corporations and Rich Thieves have made the US Tax Laws a Byzantine Mess of contradictions and loopholes which they know how to navigate in order to steal Trillions and hide their filthy lucre in off-shore accounts, just waiting to be repatriated tax free when the properly bought politican makes it possible.

But, while these Rich Thieves engage in artful dodging of tax laws and self-congratulatory back slaps for their "Capitalist Ingenuity" there is a strain of Sadism in methods. Because Taxes are what the Poor pay because if the Poor where blessed and virtuous they'd pay No Taxes.

An article by the noted Austerity Sadist Michael Kinsley illuminates how Austerity isn't about Deficit Reduction but an ardent and fervent desire to punish the Wicked Poor as a happy by-product of enforcing a noble Neo-Feudalist State.

Austerity is designed to Cut Government Spending not the Deficit. Because that Government spending goes to The Wicked (i.e. the Poor) it is not right that the Rich Man who is synonymous with Righteousness suffer.

And there can be no Greater Good than Lower Taxes as a reward to the Noble and Virtuous.

But, if the problem where merely one of Effective Tax Rates, simply highlighting the Massive Income Inequality that exists in America would show how the Goal of the Piss Down Your Back and Tell You It's Raining Reaganomics and Bush Tax Cuts were designed and implemented for no other reason than to create a society in which the Richest One Percent live better than the Pharoahs of Ancient Egypt.

The Plutocracy gets a Sadistic thrill when Americans vote away their birthrights. The Koch Brothers Propaganda Machine Americans For Prosperity released an email when the Sequester went into effect lauding Speaker Boehner and the House Republicans, 

[T]oday Americans for Prosperity thanks Speaker John Boehner and House Republicans for standing up to President Obama and making sure the $85 billion in much-needed sequester spending cuts took effect. 

As an example, I was out at a leadership event in Portland, Oregon this week where Beth, one of our dedicated Americans For Prosperity activists, told me how she had sent personal messages to each of her 243 Facebook friends asking them to contact their member of Congress to tell him to"keep the cuts" so we can "get our economy moving again." 

The Koch Brothers, Banksters, Tax Dodging CEO's and Sadistic Economists aren't interested in the US EConomy but in transferring as much money upwards as possible and creating a GovernmentApparatus  which will enforce and perpetuate their Noble Neo-Feudalist Utopia.

Surprise. The IRS "Scandal" is George W. Bush's and the Republicans Fault

First off, if your Organization Name incorporates Taxed Enough Already, you are one step behind the Sovereign Citizen Movements which declare themselves immune to local, state and federal laws. It shouldn't come as a surprise when the IRS investigates you.

It's possible and, most likely, probable that the Tea Party Organized Groups who applied for all these 501(c)(4) statuses are nothing more than thinly veiled Tax Shelters and Political Action Committees designed to improperly funnel and shelter monies. A 501(c)(4) has to be set up as Social Welfare Organization and can not engage in Partisan Politics.

But, here's the kick to the teeth of the Right-Wing cry babies, the Commissioner of the IRS while these investigations were conducted, Douglas Shulman, was appointed by George W. Bush and served until November 9, 2012. Prior to that Shulman worked with Grover Norquist as the Chief of Staff for the National Commission on Restructuring the Internal Revenue Service. President Obama does not have a nominee at the IRS because the Senate Republicans policy of filibustering all nominees put forth by Obama for  any position.

Now, of course, there is a huge component of IOKIYAR for the IRS under George W. Bush to investigate Liberal Churches, the NAACP and the ALCU. Because... Duh! They're "Liberal". However, that's when Republicans were declaring if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't mind and if you do complain it's because you've obviously broken the law.

But, more importantly what this IRS snafu shows is Tax Reform is a key part of the Economic Reform we need today.

Now, I'm not supporting Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan's version of Tax Reform, i.e. eliminating Taxes on the 1% and Corporate Behemoths and raising taxes on the Middle Class and "The Lucky Duckies", or as Mitt Romney stated during the 2012 Presidential Election, "I'm not concerned about the very poor."

No, I mean real Tax Reform which gets the Ultra-Rich and Corporations to pay their fair share of the Country's Tax Burden. It's been very clear that beginning in 1981 with Reagan's shifting of the tax burden onto the backs of the Middle Class the Rich have been inventing more ways and crafting more loop holes with which to steal Trillions of Dollars which belongs to the American People.

Once Piss Down Your Back Reaganomics became the Governing principle in Washington we suddenly grew a 15 Trillion Dollar Debt. And it simply is because the Rich Plutocrats and Corporations are not shouldering their share of the burden. 

The entire Debt is the result of the greedy rich scheming to transfer the burden of Government onto the backs of the Middle Class in the hopes it would grind them into penury whilst at the same time making their Government puppets eliminate the meager assistance provided to actual Americans.

In April, a hacked cache of millions of documents revealed the amount of Theft committed by Tax Frauds. 

The anonymity of the offshore world makes it difficult to track the flow of money. A study by James S. Henry, former chief economist at McKinsey & Company, estimates that wealthy individuals have $21 trillion to $32 trillion in private financial wealth tucked away in offshore havens — roughly equivalent to the size of the U.S. and Japanese economies combined. 

The report said the money being sheltered included proceeds of Ponzi schemes as well as money drained from national coffers, adding that studies estimate that cross-border flows of global proceeds of financial crimes total between $1 trillion and $1.6 trillion a year.

So, remember when right-wingers and Republicans talk of shared sacrifices they mean for you to sacrifice your pension and your health care insurance,

"They can tell their unions that they have to accept cuts now or face a much more dire fate in bankruptcy court.” - Grover Norquist

"Now, pain will be inflicted when we change that. People are going to do with less. People who are used to having entitlement at a certain level will not have them at that level anymore. That's the story." NJ Governor Chris Christie. 

Shared Sacrifice means the realization of the Republican Goal of Neo-Feudalism, Wage Slavery and cutthroat Capitalism for the Poor and Socialism for the Rich and their undying Corporate monsters. 

Sears Executives abandoning the Company laden with stolen Illinois Taxpayer dollars

Sears executives are fleeing from the company one after another.

Sears Holdings Corp's Chief Marketing Officer Monica Woo left the struggling chain earlier this year after just five months, dealing yet another blow to the retailer as it tries to turnaround its business.

John Goodman, a seasoned retail executive who was executive vice president of the apparel and home unit, left earlier this year. Dev Mukherjee, president of the home appliances business at Sears, left the Hoffman Estates-based chain in March. Reporting by Dhanya Skariachan (Reuters)

In December, Governor Quinn gave Sears Holding Corp a special tax dispensation after the company threatened to move out of their Hoffman Estates, Illinois Corporate Headquarters and close numerous Illinois stores.

Sears used their leverage over Quinn to secure tax credits worth $15 million a year for 10 years, which it can use against withheld employee income taxes. The deal also extended a special taxing district, reducing the company's local property tax bill for another 15 years.

The reason a Corporation gets special tax district in a state is so they can funnel their profits to the Corporate HQ and report the income in that special district thus paying a lower rate from other states on the profits.

There was an obvious quid pro quo in place that Sears would spare Illinois stores, but last month Sears Holding announced it was closing five stores in Illinois.

The Illinois stores — two Sears locations and three Kmarts — join a list of up to 120 underperforming stores that Sears said in December would be shut. No Illinois stores were on the first list, but Sears didn't rule out later additions.

I don't know if Monica Woo, John Goodman, or Dev Mukherjee received a Golden Parachute special executive compensation severance packages for their bang-up work running Sears into the ground but, I do know the average Sears/K-Mart worker got a Corporate Golden Shower when they were terminated.

But, I wouldn't be shocked to find out those 3 received millions for helping with the special tax dodge and the Corporate "restructuring". Because this is how modern American Capitalism and Corporate business works. A company gets the state to absorb it's deficits and losses, cuts jobs and closes stores, off-shores manufacturing jobs and hires illegals with false social security numbers all to increase the bottom line and compensation for those at the very top.