Wednesday, July 24, 2019
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Amazon’s IRS Prime Deal
Subsidizing Wall Street by taxing Main Street.
Seattle, we have a problem.
Amazon generated almost $12 billion in income domestically last year. But the company paid no corporate income tax. Instead, the federal government paid the company $129 million in tax rebates.
Amazon, like so many other companies, pays the IRS Prime rate. Individuals join this club at their own risk — of audits, wage garnishment, and even jail time. Unlike Amazon Prime, IRS Prime remains an exclusive club open to giant corporations. Strangely, the tax scofflaws never seem to face the tax man’s wrath as individuals do.
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, notes that 60 of the Fortune 500 similarly avoided paying corporate tax last year. Duke Energy, John Deere, and General Motors all generated revenues in excess of a billion dollars. All received a tax rebate.
Enjoy a hot dog from an Aramark vendor at a ballpark? That company, despite more than $300 million in revenue, received a rebate. Like watching Stranger Things? The federal government apparently likes you watching, too. Netflix paid no corporate income tax on almost $900 million in revenue. But stranger things occur in the labyrinthian world of the IRS. Drink Molson Canadian or Coors Light? Molson Coors paid no corporate income tax on more than a billion in income. Fill up at Chevron? That company raked in billions and somehow received a rebate.
The problem, clearly, does not involve the rate, lowered to 21 percent in the Trump tax cuts enacted for 2018. It pertains to 21 percent, not amounting to 21 percent. The many loopholes and deductions enable companies with the best lawyers and most creative accountants to avoid paying taxes altogether.
The federal government generates less than ten percent of its revenue from the corporate income tax, just above one percent of gross domestic product (GDP). As late as 1943, federal revenue from corporations dwarfed federal revenue from individuals. Individuals now pay about four times the amount that corporations do.
What changed? The tax code became more complicated. This resulted in individuals effectively subsidizing corporations. Like onerous rates that pervert the profit-loss system and incentivize disincentives and disincentivize incentives, corporate welfare rigs the free market. It just does so in a way that boosts some companies instead of hamstringing them.
U.S. federal revenues are $3.4 trillion and expenses are $4.4 trillion. Half of that deficit could be closed by adjusting corporate taxes to raise the level to 4 percent of GNP or $800 billion. Assuming GDP of $20 trillion, cash flow in U.S. corporations should support corporate taxes in range of 4 percent of GDP. European economies use value-added taxes to raise government revenues. Value-added taxes (VAT) are regressive (like sales taxes) and go the wrong way on inequality. Corporate taxes are at a 21 percent rate, down from 35 percent. Twenty-one percent matches tax rates prevalent in Europe. The problem remains not the rate but the excessive deductions reducing taxable income. Deductions should be limited to cash expenses and amortization of capital expenditures over long periods, say, 10 years or longer on assets with useful lines over 10 years (the other half of deficit could be reduced by moving healthcare spending from 18 percent to 13 percent of GDP).
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy admits, “Companies profiled in this report appear to be using a diverse array of legal tax breaks to zero out their federal income taxes.” In other words, multibillion-dollar corporations can pay nothing without...
This Is What Happened When Kim Jong Un Used FaceApp...
He Went From A TinPot Communist Dictator To A
Pot-Bellied Communist Shit-Mouthed-Orator..
Rosie O'Donnell Should Go To Jail Just Like Dinesh D'Souza...
Wordplay With President Trump....
I Doubt He Actually Said This, But It Would Be So Funny If He Did!
OCASIO-CORTEZ: CRITICIZING ILHAN OMAR OVER 9/11 REMARKS ‘IS AN INCITEMENT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST PROGRESSIVE WOMEN OF COLOR’
Why Did Ilhan Omar Travel To Philadelphia?
Happy Anniversary To Ilhan Omar And Her BrotherHusband!
Poster Girl For The Hate America Leftist Narrative...
She Is A Shit Slinging Muck Dweller
Judicial Watch Files House Ethics Complaint against Rep. Ilhan Omar over Potential Immigration, Marriage, Tax, and Student Loan Fraud
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it hand-delivered ethics complaint to Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Office of Congressional Ethics David Skaggs calling for a full investigation into potential crimes tied to allegations that Rep. Ilhan Omar may have married her biological brother.
“The evidence is overwhelming Rep. Omar may have violated the law and House rules. The House of Representatives must urgently investigate and resolve the serious allegations of wrongdoing by Rep. Omar,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “We encourage Americans to share their views on Rep. Omar’s apparent misconduct with their congressmen.”
The Judicial Watch complaint is reprinted below:
Ethics Complaint Against Rep. Ilhan Omar Concerning Possible Violations of Federal and State Law
Dear Chairman Skaggs,
Judicial Watch is a non-profit, non-partisan educational foundation, promoting transparency, accountability and integrity in government and fidelity to the rule of law. We regularly monitor congressional ethics issues as part of our anti-corruption mission.
This letter serves as an official complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE).
Substantial, compelling and, to date, unrefuted evidence has been uncovered that Rep. Ilhan Omar may have committed the following crimes in violation of both federal law and Minnesota state law: perjury, immigration fraud, marriage fraud, state and federal tax fraud, and federal student loan fraud.
Such violations would also breach the Code of Ethics for Government Service, to which all federal officeholders are subject, “Any person in Government service should uphold the Constitution, laws, and legal regulations of the United States and all governments therein and never be a party to their evasion.”) Rep. Omar actions in this suspected immigration fraud, marriage fraud, perjurious statements on her Minnesota divorce filings, and falsifications on her tax returns, merit your immediate investigation.
In the words of investigative reporter David Steinberg: “The facts describe perhaps the most extensive spree of illegal misconduct committed by a House member in American history.”
The evidence developed against Rep. Omar was the result of a three-year-long investigation in both the United States and the United Kingdom by Mr. Steinberg and his investigative reporter colleagues Preya Samsundar and Scott Johnson. It is supported by information gathered from public records, social media postings, genealogy databases, computer forensic analysis, unaltered digital photographs, discussions between the investigative reporters and the subjects of the investigation themselves, and information supplied by confidential sources within the Somali-American community.
Documented-based reporting by Steinberg, et al. has developed the following information: Rep. Ilhan Abdullahi Omar, a citizen of the United States, married her biological brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a citizen of the United Kingdom, in 2009, presumably as part of an immigration fraud scheme. The couple legally divorced in 2017. In the course of that divorce, Ms. Omar submitted an “Application for an Order for Service by Alternate Means” to the State of Minnesota on August 2, 2017 and claimed, among other things, that she had had no contact with Ahmed Nur Said Elmi after June 2011. She also claimed that she did know where to find him. The evidence developed by Mr. Steinberg and his colleagues demonstrates with a high degree of certainty that Ms. Omar not only had contact with Mr. Elmi, but actually met up with him in London in 2015, which is supported by photographic evidence. Ms. Omar signed the “Application for an Order for Service by Alternate Means” under penalty of perjury. The very document that Ilham Omar signed on August 2, 2017 bears the following notation directly above her signature: “I declare under penalty of perjury that everything I have stated in this document is true and correct. Minn. Stat. § 358.116.”
Of particular importance are archived photographs taken during a widely reported trip by Ilhan Omar to London in 2015, posted to her own Instagram account under her nickname “hameey”, in which she poses with her husband/presumed brother, Ahmed Elmi. These photographs from 2015 are documentary evidence that in fact she met up with Mr. Elmi after June 2011 and before the date she signed the divorce document in August 2017, thereby calling into question the veracity of her claim that she had not seen Mr. Elmi since June 2011.
Rep. Omar’s potential crimes far exceed perjurious statements made in a Minnesota court filing.
Rep. Omar’s conduct may include immigration fraud. It appears that Rep. Omar married her brother in order to assist his...
Revealed: Mueller deputy Weissmann's offer to a Ukrainian oligarch to drop prosecution in exchange for damaging testimony on Trump
It's an open secret that Robert Mueller was a figurehead in the special counsel probe aimed at unseating President Trump, and that the actual operational boss of the team of Trump-haters was Andrew Weissmann. Former U.S. attorney Joe DiGenova goes so far as to call the Mueller Report the "Weissmann Report."
With Mueller's testimony scheduled for Wednesday, leakers have revealed to John Solomon of The Hill that Weissmann pushed an effort to obtain incriminating testimony about Trump "collusion" from a Ukrainian oligarch, Dmitry Firtash, to the ethical limits and maybe beyond — offering to drop prosecution on a case pending in the United States in return for something to use against Trump.
The offer was declined, and the oligarch's attorneys state that this is because there was nothing to offer. But what makes the situation scandalous is that an Austrian court — where the oligarch fled — has received documents on the offer that have led it to halt extradition to the United States to face trial on the case that Weissmann offered to drop, telling the world that something fishy indeed was going on.
Solomon writes:
The ink was still drying on special counsel Robert Mueller's appointment papers when his chief deputy, the famously aggressive and occasionally controversial prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, made a bold but secret overture in early June 2017.
Weissmann quietly reached out to the American lawyers for Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash with a tempting offer: Give us some dirt on Donald Trump in the Russia case, and Team Mueller might make his 2014 U.S. criminal charges go away.
The specifics of the never-before-reported offer were confirmed to me by multiple sources with direct knowledge, as well as in contemporaneous defense memos I read. (snip)
Weissmann's overture was wrapped with complexity and intrigue far beyond the normal federal case, my sources indicate. (snip)
Mueller was appointed just two weeks earlier, did not even have a full staff selected, and was still getting up to speed on the details of the investigation. So why rush to make a deal when the prosecution team still was being selected, some wondered. (snip)
Prosecutors in plea deals typically ask a defendant for a written proffer of what they can provide in testimony and identify the general topics that might interest them. But Weissmann appeared to go much further in a July 7, 2017, meeting with...
FBI Rocked By Public Suicide of TOP FBI Agent Who Investigated Clinton Foundation
 |
| The Container Bar, Austin Texas |
Salvatore “Sal” Cincinelli, a former Wall Street broker who joined the FBI in 2010, died last week during a night out after an FBI training session, sources said.
related: The Hillary Clinton Dead Pool“Very very bright guy,” one FBI insider said. “Such a young guy, it really gets you in the gut. He put in the hours too, was always working hard.”
Cincinelli was 41.
Cincinelli was reportedly out partying with FBI colleagues at the Container Bar, a trendy watering hole in Austin, TX. The group had been drinking and dancing, according to sources. Later in the evening Cincinelli reportedly turned the gun on himself on a crowded....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)