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Polar bear with carrot

Thursday, March 17, 2011

The Double Irish

Robert DeGoff sent over this link to an excellent NPR Fresh Air story, an interview with Bloomberg's Jesse Drucker entitled How Offshore Tax Havens Save Companies Billions. You can link to the audio as well. Drucker shows how companies like Google, Pfizer, Lilly, Oracle, Facebook and Microsoft use shady techniques like the "Dutch Sandwich" or "Double Irish" in order to shield profits from Uncle Sam.
"Drucker reported that Google had saved $3.1 billion in taxes in the past three years by shifting the majority of its foreign profits into accounts in Ireland, the Netherlands and Bermuda using financial techniques called "the Dutch Sandwich" and "the Double Irish" arrangement. Basically, he says, Google credited its Irish office with the majority of its non-U.S. sales revenue — and then shuttled that money through various subsidiaries located in Ireland and other countries to save billions in taxes."
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An interesting story from Newsday's Peter Goldmark on Exxon and the tax avoidance game. Exxon made record multi billion dollar profits last year. Received 156 million dollars in U.S. government subsidies.  Paid little or no U.S. taxes.  Of course Texas Republican Representative Joe Barton was apoplectic recently regarding the prospect of cutting the 4 billion dollar annual U.S. subsidy to the energy giants.

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General Electric made 10.3 billion in income in 2009. They paid nothing in income tax. How did they do it? Check out this article from Forbes, What The Top U.S. Companies Pay In Taxes, by Christopher Helman.

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The majority talks a good game regarding jobs in this country, but time and time again, along with their cronies at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, they have come down on the side of outsourcing, job loss and fat corporate profits as opposed to employment for american workers.

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NPR seems to be the latest ox to be gored and if the right succeeds in defunding and destroying it, it will be a sad day for america. Good bye Bert. Goodbye Ernie. Terry Gross. Talk of the Nation. All Things Considered. Prairie Home Companion. Car Talk. Classical Music. Morning Edition. Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Great stuff, mostly apolitical. They try a lot harder to play it straight than Roger Ailes' boys at Fox. It will really suck if the repubs are successful. I would sooner cut out subsidies for oil companies.

1 comment:

Sanoguy said...

I definitely agree about the Repubs shilling for the oil companies and with your take on them cutting NPR/PBS.

I am hopeful, that both NPR and PBS can survive with more, but, hopefully still limited, commercial endorsements. OI think both NPR and PBS are American treasures.