[BigV]

Originally Posted by mercy

Given the US has among the highest rates of taxation and corps are moving their headquarters out of the US, what do you determine to be "their fair share"?

That's a good question mercy. I've talked about this in a couple posts to this point, and I'll recap those thoughts here.

I don't have a strict numeric value in mind for what constitutes their fair share. Focusing on a number like this is misleading. In fact, anyone who views the information in the two links you provided will find wildly different numbers for US corporation tax rates. Cato says 40% and Tax Foundation says 27%. The story I recently cited talked about Google paying 2.4% So, "what's fair?", see how that isn't a useful question if the answer needs to be a percentage?

Back to your good question. Just like our individual tax system is built so that the highest earners pay rates that are lower than the rates paid by individuals who earn less, our system is built to permit corporations with lots of profit and therefore lots of resources to take advantage of the rules to shelter large portions of that profit from exposure to taxation. Our laws are written to permit corporations to avoid/shield/evade/shelter whatever lots of these profits. I'm not the one saying so, just look at their own words!

From here:

Representative Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican who serves on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, in May introduced legislation that would call for an immediate tax holiday allowing companies to repatriate overseas profits at a 5.25 percent rate.

How much money are we (and by we I mean the US Chamber of Commerce, by far the most pro-business organization in the country) talking about? As much as one-thousand two-hundred BILLIONS. That's 1.2 Trillion Dollars. That is how much money is estimated to be "parked" offshore by corporations, US corporations that do their business here in the United States. And that's accumulated since 2004, the date of the last tax repatriation holiday. Look, what's happening here is NOT that businesses are being driven out of the country because of our tax laws. What's happening here is that our laws permit the profits from those businesses (most especially very large businesses) to leak, not be driven, out of the country. This is legal. This is how we've built our system. This is what I am saying is UNFAIR.

That we have a system that enables corporations who, in every other way, participate fully in all other aspects of our society, except the part where they pay their fair share for all the things they enjoy, is evidenced by the very existence of overseas profits. Why is the whole idea of a tax repatriation holiday even possible if there were no EXPATRIATED profits? You can't REpatriate what hasn't been EXpatriated in the first place. Why do we *let* profits be expatriated?

It's not just unfair to me, oh poor me, but to all of the rest of us who do not have the situation or wherewithal to take advantage of these aspects of our systems, and who therefore pay proportionally more than the corporate giants who can and are.

As I said before, the system we have, the laws we have are configured to make the costs of running our country to fall unfairly on those who have less money. Is this explanation clear to you?