It does not appear that the Nevada bank accounts evade or avoid tax on Trusts, appears to be an issue of confidentiality.
Going after Google Britain’s tax men struck a poor deal. But the real problem lies with flawed international corporate-tax rules "IT WAS meant to win plaudits for clawing more money out of cunning, tax-shy multinationals. Instead, a deal between Google and the British government, in which the tech giant will pay £130m ($185m) in back taxes covering a ten-year period, has attracted only opprobrium. Critics at home and abroad argue that Google has got off lightly. On the European mainland, for example, suspected corporate tax-dodgers face raids and whopping demands: France wants €500m ($550m) or more from Google. Apple could be on the hook for $8 billion if the European Commission, which is investigating its Irish operations, concludes that it got a cushy deal from the Emerald Isle. Britain may well have been too generous to Google. But the bigger problem with the deal is what it says about international efforts to crack down on corporate-tax avoidance. Nineteen for me, one for you Corporate taxes are a poor way to raise revenue. Since the burden is ultimately borne by people, whether investors, workers or consumers, it would, in theory, be more efficient to tax them directly. But abolishing corporate levies would create its own problems (see article). In poor countries with large informal sectors, big companies are a rare source of reliable tax revenue. In rich countries, wealthy people would doubtless turn themselves into companies to avoid income taxes. For policymakers, therefore, the priority is to make corporate taxes less distorting and less easy to avoid. The rules governing the taxation of multinationals are a threadbare patchwork of national laws and bilateral treaties, dating back almost a century and designed for an age of manufacturing, not multimedia. They grow ever more gameable with the spread of e-commerce and companies’ increasing reliance on intangible intellectual property (IP). Technology and drug firms, for instance, routinely move their IP to subsidiaries in tax havens, which can then manipulate the fees they charge other parts of the group for access to it in order to suck their profits into the lower-tax country. These manoeuvres may be legal, but their goal is tax avoidance, often in a way that flouts the spirit of the law. In an era of austerity, that offends the public mood, which is why governments around the world are being pressed to implement dozens of anti-avoidance measures proposed last year by the OECD, a club of mainly rich countries. Many of these measures make sense. They seek to tie tax more closely to economic activity and also to limit some arcane but hugely profitable tricks, such as using internal loans to claim tax deductions. Progress at the OECD is spurring action: indeed, as part of its deal with British tax authorities, Google has agreed to pay tax in future on a chunk of its sales to British advertisers. The problem is that the OECD approach maintains a damaging fiction which is ingrained in the current system: that a multinational can be seen as a cluster of separate companies to be treated as if they are trading with each other at arm’s length. The “transfer pricing” rules that police this system are complex and flawed. Keeping this approach, but toughening up the policing, means creating yet more rules—and loopholes. Better to think of each firm as a single entity. Then countries could either agree to share the tax on companies’ worldwide profits according to a formula that takes account of their sales, employees, assets and so on; or allow the entire worldwide profits to be taxed by the home country, with a tax-credit mechanism for countries where the work actually goes on or revenue is earned—but, crucially, not brass-plate jurisdictions—in order to avoid double taxation. In both cases, the incentives and opportunities to move profits into tax havens would be greatly reduced. Instead of this unitary approach, however, the patchwork persists, and with it the likelihood of unco-ordinated national tax policies. This is the context in which Google and the British government forged their deal. The bill presented to the company looks from the outside like a sweetheart deal, but it is impossible to be sure because you cannot know how it was calculated. This lack of transparency will do nothing to increase public confidence that tax avoidance is being curbed. Nor, in the long run, will the Google approach help multinationals. If a lot of countries go their own way, at their own pace, the result could be tax chaos, a bloody battle over countries’ taxing rights in which overlapping claims cause the pendulum to swing back from under- to over-taxation. Tax diplomacy, like politics, is the art of the possible. But failing to push harder for a radical overhaul, at a time when the planets were aligned for change, looks like a costly mistake." http://www.economist.com/news/leade...l?zid=293&ah=e50f636873b42369614615ba3c16df4a
Obama pushes Congress to end tax inversions "President Barack Obama on Tuesday called on Congress to end tax inversions, saying the Treasury Department's latest move to curb the practice should be adopted. "It sticks the rest of us with the tab and it makes hard-working Americans feel like the deck is stacked against them," Obama said. In an inversion, a U.S. company acquires a smaller foreign competitor and moves its tax address. The company aims to get a lower tax rate in the process..." http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/05/obama-praises-treasurys-move-to-curb-tax-inversions.html
So much crap. Inversions are the symptom of a stupid corporate tax code that provides an incentive for foreign investment and penalizes international corporation for investing in the U.S.; nothing could be more stupid. Inversion is in reaction to a Tax Policy that is screwing American workers by driving companies to move and invest abroad. Obama and his fellow travelers here are merely acting to ring fence this Stupid Policy. It would serve them right if Pfizer sold the whole company to the Chinese, cashing out the insiders and leaving them to invest in tax exempt muni bonds; then they can run for office and vote that the Fed needs to back up the states and munis to see that the bonds get paid. No one is talking about our Perversely dysfunctional and self destructive corporate tax code that is the actual cause of this reaction.
I would be happier if they would eliminate taxes on dividends. The corporation already pays taxes. And as a shareholder you are getting your share of the income based on your proportional ownership. Why should you have to pay a tax on something you have already been taxed on ? It's a double tax. A tax on a tax. Imagine what it would do for the stock market the day it passed. And the impact it would have on tax free bonds.
As you point out, the double tax on Corporate income is another perverse feature of the U.S. Code. However, the best way to fix that is to reduce the Corporate Tax to Zero and raise the dividend to tax to regular individual income tax rates, while at the same time discouraging debt expense and increasing the importance of dividend performance. This simple change would create an explosion of inward capital investment in the U.S.; it would increase employment and raise wages; it would encourage reinvestment of profit into the corporation and discourage the use of debt to buy back shares. The actual revenues paid to the U.S. government would go up dramatically as the distinction between U.S. and foreign earnings, S-Corp and LLC all become mute, and there will be no tax favors to lobby for. Its a win all around, more tax revenue, more profit and less corruption.
I don't think it is an easy answer, but I think corporations should pay taxes on their income but I think that more could be done to make things more competitive. But you can't have a blanket policy across the board and treat a guy that owns a laundrymat the same as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Chase Bank. Corporate taxes provide about 11 percent of federal tax revenues. ------- In 2015, total federal revenues in fiscal year 2015 are expected to be $3.18 trillion.2 These revenues come from three major sources: Income taxes paid by individuals: $1.48 trillion, or 47% of all tax revenues. Payroll taxes paid jointly by workers and employers: $1.07 trillion, 34% of all tax revenues. Corporate income taxes paid by businesses: $341.7 billion, or 11% of all tax revenues. There are also a handful of other types of taxes, like customs duties and excise taxes that make up much smaller portions of federal revenue. Customs duties are taxes on imports, paid by the importer, while excise taxes are taxes levied on specific goods, like gasoline. This pie chart below shows how much each of these revenue sources is expected to bring in during fiscal year 2015. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/research-commentary -------- There is a lot of room for improvement. First, I 'd like to eliminate all state and local deductions on Federal Return. Currently, you get to deduct sales tax, alimony (I think so ) real estate tax.......mortgage interest....a lot of local and state based taxes. Taxing consumers for local expenses should not have anything to do with federal tax returns. That should be eliminated and states should stop dipping their hands in the pockets of the federal govt. One has nothing to do with the other. But our dear Supreme Court said that corporations were people.....that is why corporations giving to politicians is legal. Just like Super Pacs. So..........as long as the SC says they are people, they should pay taxes. But it should be revised to increase investment in the U.S. and eliminate the exodus of manufacturing jobs to Mexico and China. And eliminate the shell companies that encourage companies like APPLE to be a foreign company. That is correct. Apple created a shell company (Isle of Man ?) and moved their residency overseas to save money. They do research in California, build their products in China and it's headquartered in Isle of Man. Truly....an international company. Technically, they are not American anymore. BTW.........40 percent of Americans don't pay tax and I think the top 1 percent pay 25 percent of taxes. Perhaps it would be more equitable if there was a limit on how much money someone should pay in federal taxes a year. Why should someone pay more money for the same goods and services from the federal govt just because he makes more? You don't pay more for a Big Mac combo at the drive thru just because you drive a new Lexus as opposed to a 20 year old Oldsmobile. Why should you pay more for clean air, clean water and a free country just because you make more ? I know the answer to the question....but there should be limits on how much anyone pays. And the 40 percent that does not pay a federal income tax? Start taxing them. Everyone should pay federal taxes even if it is only $10 a month. From 18 - death. There are no free lunches. It does not matter if you pay a local sales tax etc...that does nothing to help the Federal govt. Everyone should pay.