Chuck Collins, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author of the new study, “Executive Excess 2011: The Massive CEO Rewards for Tax Dodging” speaks with Democracy Now.
25 of the nation’s largest corporations paid more money to their CEOs last year than they did to the federal government in income taxes. Often using overseas tax havens, many of the corporations managed to make billions in profits but paid little to nothing in federal taxes. In many cases the companies received large tax rebates. The list includes some of the country’s best-known companies, such as Ford, Coca-Cola, Verizon, General Electric and eBay.
Elected leaders from the local level to the federal level refuse to put revenue on the table. Tax inequity is the primary cause of global budget shortfalls and clearly there is no empirical evidence that providing tax breaks creates jobs but has created a disparity between CEO pay to that of the average worker in the United States measured at 325-to-1 last year.
Guns don’t kill people, the old saw goes. People do.
By the same token, corporations don’t dodge taxes. People do. The people who run corporations. And these people — America’s CEOs — are reaping awesomely lavish rewards for the tax dodging they have their corporations do.
In fact, corporate tax dodging has gone so out of control that 25 major U.S. corporations last year paid their chief executives more than they paid Uncle Sam in federal income taxes.
