You Have More Money In Your Wallet Than Bank of America Pays In Federal Taxes

by Susie Madrak
CrooksandLiars.com

Think Progress features this piece on USUncut, the U.S. version of the United Kingdom grassroots movement that dares to ask the impertinent question, "Why should our public services be slashed when we have huge corporations who don't even pay any taxes?" I think this movement has real potential -- its success in Great Britain is grounded in its broadbased appeal. After all, not many people agree corporations should pay less in taxes than they do.

Anyway, I hope you'll check them out. The website has some good tips for organizing an action:

In an interview with In These Times, Carl Gibson, the founder of US Uncut, which is organizing some of today’s UK-inspired massive demonstrations against tax dodgers, explains that while ordinary Americans are being asked to sacrifice, major corporations continue to use the rigged tax code to avoid paying any federal taxes at all. As he says, if you have “one dollar” in your wallet, you’re paying more than the “combined income tax liability of GE, ExxonMobil, Citibank, and the Bank of America“:

[Gibson] explains, “I have one dollar in my wallet. That’s more than the combined income tax liability of GE, ExxonMobil, Citibank, and the Bank of America. That means somebody is gaming the system.” [Emphasis ours.]

Indeed, as politicians are asking ordinary Americans to sacrifice their education, their health, their labor rights, and their wellbeing to tackle budget deficits, some of the world’s richest multinational corporations are getting away with shirking their responsibility and paying nothing. ThinkProgress has assembled a short but far from comprehensive list of these tax dodgers — corporations which have rigged the tax system to their advantage so they can reap huge profits and avoid paying taxes.

(More here.)