Before diving fully into the deep seated Republican loathing for taxation of wealth, I thought to relieve the pressure a bit with a heartwarming story about North Carolina GOP concern for young voters and their parents’ taxes.
Under a bill introduced in April, parents would face a tax penalty if their children register to vote at their college address (which for convenience and organizational effectiveness, students clearly prefer.) Also, the bill would require voters to have their vehicles registered at the same address as their voter registration. That also could cut down on college student registration, since many students maintain their vehicle registration in their home counties.
The stiff penalty: The parent or legal guardian will not be allowed to claim the voter as a dependent for state income tax purposes. For conservatives it must be extraordinarily painful to be raising taxes, but it’s clearly in a good if not holy cause; anything to cut that student vote!
There is even more North Carolina Republican excitement as the state proposes a dramatic move to claim ascendency in the voter suppression sweepstakes, but more of that on another day.
With respect to corporate taxation, a July 1 CNN Money article notes some interesting, possibly dramatic news contained in the title. “GAO (Government AccountabilityOffice): U.S. corporations pay average effective tax rate of 12.6 percent,” by James O’Toole.
Since many conservative lawmakers claim to dwell under the grave apprehension, hyped by Senators Jeff Sessions and Orrin Hatch among others, that ours at a nominal (read fictional) 39-plus percent is the highest tax rate in the civilized world, this should ease the fears rampant on the right.
Well, not really.
This feigned Republican indignation, even horror, about a monstrous tax injustice that doesn’t exist is, of course, part of the show meant to inflame the millions who haven’t a clue to reality.
If your own taxes come in at 20 percent plus, try incorporation. It can’t hurt.
In another riff on the same theme of tax myth versus reality, we have the piece “Ten Most Profitable U.S. Corporations Paid Average Tax Rate Of Just 9 Percent Last Year,” written by Alexander Eichler and published Aug. 6 in the Huffington Post.
“According to the financial site NerdWallet, the 10 most profitable U.S. companies paid an average federal tax rate of just 9 percent last year. The group includes heavyweights Exxon Mobil, Apple, Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase and General Electric… some of these companies paid more than 9 percent — JPMorgan earned $26.7 billion in 2011, for example, and paid $3.7 billion of it, or 14 percent, to the federal government – and some paid less, like Exxon Mobil, which only sent 2 percent of its $73.3 billion earnings to the IRS,” Eichler wrote.
It’s all very confusing as conservatives make their case against the heavily destructive burden of taxation upon the corporate world.
The following piece, “Avoiding Their Fair Share of Taxes” from the website of the AFL-CIO, attempts clarification:
“Overall, the nation’s federal revenue from corporate income tax receipts, as a percentage of the nation’s gross national product, dropped dramatically to one-sixth of that in the 1950s.
“As the corporate share of our nation’s federal tax revenue has fallen, individual Americans have paid a relatively higher percentage of federal tax revenue. Corporate taxes fell from 26.4 percent of total tax revenue in 1950 to just 7.4 percent of total tax revenue in 2010. During this same period, personal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes increased from 51.4 percent to 83.8 percent of total tax revenue.”
While we’re in the neighborhood, I thought it might be useful, possibly illuminating unto alarming, to examine the trends in income inequality over the past 30 or so years. The following detail is drawn from the Sept. 1, 2010 article, “Executive Excess 2010: CEO Pay and the Great Recession,” by Sarah Anderson, Chuck Collins, Sam Pizzigati and Kevin Shih.
“America’s CEOs had a terribly rough 2009. Or so the national and regional executive pay surveys released so far this year would suggest. ‘CEOs See Pay Fall Again,’ blared one headline early this past spring. ‘CEO pay rankings dominated by large salary cuts,’ read another in June. ‘Silicon Valley bosses,’ summed up still another, ‘get pay cut.’ Month after month, the headlines have pounded home a remarkably consistent message: Corporate executives, here in the Great Recession, are suffering, too.
“Their pay, to be sure, dipped on average in 2009 from 2008 levels, just as their pay in 2008, the first Great Recession year, dipped somewhat from 2007. But executive pay overall remains far above inflation adjusted levels of years past. In fact, after adjusting for inflation, CEO pay in 2009 more than doubled the CEO pay average for the decade of the 1990s, more than quadrupled the CEO pay average for the 1980s, and ran approximately eight times the CEO average for all the decades of the mid-20th century.
“American workers, by contrast, are taking home less in real weekly wages than they took home in the 1970s. Back in those years, precious few top executives made over 30 times what their workers made. In 2009, we calculate in the 17th annual Executive Excess, CEOs of major U.S. corporations averaged 263 times the average compensation of American workers. CEOs are clearly not hurting.”
“But they are, as we detail below, causing others to needlessly hurt — by cutting jobs to feather their own already comfortable executive nests. In what was quite possibly the most dramatic confirmation of executive fitness and efficiency:
“In 2009, the CEOs who slashed their payrolls the deepest took home 42 percent more compensation than the year’s chief executive pay average for S&P (Standard and Poor’s) 500 companies. Most careful analysts of the high-finance meltdown that ushered in the Great Recession have concluded that excessive executive compensation played a prime causal role. Outrageously high rewards gave executives an incentive to behave outrageously, to take the sorts of reckless risks that would eventually endanger our entire economy.”
But were these not the “job creators” of GOP fame and glory?
We steel ourselves for the next year, the 2011 reports? But they’re in!
“CEO pay soars while workers’ pay stalls,” by Matt Krantz and Barbara Hansen, was updated April 4, 2011, in USA Today.
“The heads of the nation’s top companies got the biggest raises in recent memory last year after taking a hiatus during the recession. At a time most employees can barely remember their last substantial raise, median CEO pay jumped 27 percent in 2010 as the executives’ compensation started working its way back to prerecession levels, a USA Today analysis of data from GovernanceMetrics International found. Workers in private industry, meanwhile, saw their compensation grow just 2.1 percent in the 12 months ended December 2010, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” Krantz and Hansen wrote.
As a tiny footnote to this tale of corporate glory, and executive riches, we note the following from that last piece: “Over the entire period from 1978 to 2012, CEO compensation measured with options realized increased about 875 percent, a rise more than double stock market growth and substantially greater than the painfully slow 5.4 percent growth in a typical worker’s compensation over the same period.”
The moral of the entire saga: It’s a crime to raise taxes on the wealthy and to thus cripple the genius of the American private enterprise system. (Also when choosing careers, opt for the high rise office suite and avoid, like the plague, any job titled “worker.”)
Jerome Page is a Benicia resident.
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Mr. Page the figures you are using need some explanation. Are they on net taxable income or gross income. I know of no one who payes the highest opersomnal income tax rate on gross income. Mr. Page you pay the tax on taxable income not gross. Let the folks know the whole story. Not a tax rate on gross income when comparing others at the very high rate which again is paid only on net. In my opinion the only ones that will fall for this info is the uninformed Liberal voter. Try again Mr. Page, this time get the numbers right..
Bob I’m on your page, I haven’t read anything credible from this writer.
Larry (whoever), I doubt your head holds anything credible. Livesay, you always assume the other guy and his sources are idiots as ill-informed and bad-intentioned as yourself. That’s just foolish.
Robert most of this article was lifted. No complete explanation on the numbers were given. Robert anyone with any sense of finance would understand that. Take a lesson in finance Robert and then we can talk.
Livesay: You could write all day and not have the credibility of a Jerome Page–Go figure!–pb
I respect Mr. Page. Does that mean I have to agree with everything he says? I made a very correct evaluation and will stick by it. I think you will find that I am correct.
Bob Livesay: You’re not “correct,” you just have an opposing opinion. I suggest you not confuse the two. Arrogance does not buy you credibility.This is not a 4th grade debating auditorium as much as you seem to welcome the competition.–pb
Peter I have no competition. Just folks that are not on the same thinking team. Yes I am correct about what I said about the article. That is what its all about.
Thank you Jerome, when I grow up, I’m not gonna head for being a Republican, those guys just whine and complain and they fall in line behind some clown named Norquist and they all hide and fear that Norquist is more powerful than their constituents…I suspect one day the Repubs will have no one to vote for them as they appeal only to sour old white men who count their ruples in their basements and perennially badmouth Obama and obstruct him at every turn. So what do they represent but no government at all, no regulation and a free-for-all to exploit the common person at every chance they can take…Hooray for money, profit, manipulating derivatives and Yippee for me and to hell with everybody else…No sir, sounds pretty lame to me—Thanks for clearing up those phony taxation numbers that they so profoundly swagger about—pb
Peter we are all responsible for our own financial situation. No benefits, do it yourself and save some money as you move thru life. It can and has been done. We all make bad financial decisions and suffer from it. But guess what this countrry gives us all the opportunity to make a comeback and move on. Opportunity is there.
What’s that got to do with Republicans timidly hiding behind the fear or Norquist? You missed the point again, Bob!–pb
I just responded to the article and some comments. My comment has as much to do with the article as your commemnts do. I try to stay on topic and the article is full of misleading info. It is very simple go to work and take care of our selves. It has worked for years. For some better than others. I would hope we would all follow our own principles and not be guided by anyone individual or group.
From the piece:Also, the bill would require voters to have their vehicles registered at the same address as their voter registration.
How horrible that people are supposed to vote, pay taxes and insurance in the city where they actually live!! I wonder if all 12 of those damnable Republicans in Detroit have conspired there as well:
an odd phenomenon in Detroit: A troubling number of residents aren’t registered to vote in the Motor City.
VOTER SUPRESSION!!!! CALL ERIK HOLDER!!!
The reason has nothing to do with citizen apathy. Instead they are registered to vote in the suburbs, where car insurance is cheaper. They use an address outside the city to renew their driver’s licenses and register, then report that address to insurers.
Cheaper insurance? Oh? Well never mind then.
Occam’s Razor at play?
A city where no one has car insurance
Mr. page I would look at the payroll taxes again. Remember s/s was much lower because it was capped at a low salary rate and Medicare did not come along till about 1966. There is your answer Mr. page. Not as big as you make it out to be. How about discussing the Big Corp revenue that is not taxed because of expansion out side of the USA. These great companies helped these overseas countries grow into what they are today. Not saying those revenues should not be taxed. Just saying the issue must be fully explained. Remember Mr. Page individual earners get a very large portion of their income reduced by deductions. Also s/s is not taxed in California and other states. Talk about helping the middle class, who upped s/s tax in the 90’s. One guess. Yes your beloeved preident Clinton. From a high of 50% to 85 %. The friend of the middleclass the Democrats. Can you imagine that.
Mr. Page I do believe you forgot the path to Democrats Guide to Political success as a candidate and then elected official. Lets just say you follow in the steps of Clinton, Weiner, Eliott and the San Diego Mayor. Sure to get elected and even looked up to. Even thought they all started the war on women and now blame the Republicans. So the moral of sucess as a Democrat in a job choice is to be an out and out sexist and dump all over women. That is the direct way to the top of the Democratic political ladder. That is the Guide to a democrat career choice. It appears to have worked. Maybe more Dems are following that guide but we just have not heard about them YET.
Just thought I’d check-in to see if the GOP is still responsible for all of the world’s ills. I’m gratified to find that the Republicans are maintaining their course toward geo-political destruction. I would expect nothing less from the party whose obvious goals are to promote the ‘Phony Scandals’ which serve to prevent Obama and his fellow Democrats from realizing any of their dreams for saving ‘Man-Kind’. I find myself contemplating whether the creators of the motion picture ‘Ground Hog Day’ are aware of how prophetic their production would become in describing the repeated rhetoric and ideals advocated by Jerome Page and his ilk.
Sorry, I try not to respond to all the Slumber Party rhetoric that gets posted here–Most of my comments re edited for “moderation” and do not appear here anyway…pb