Executive Pay Of Austerity Advocates Saves Companies More Than $1 Billion Via Tax Loophole
Zach Carter, HuffPost,
Posted: 05/02/2013 12:00 am EDT | Updated: 05/02/2013 8:26 am EDT
WASHINGTON -- Companies in the Fix the Debt coalition, which advocates for federal austerity policies, qualified for $1 billion or more in tax breaks tied to executive pay packages from 2009 to 2011, according to a new report by the liberal think tanks Institute for Policy Studies and Campaign for America's Future.
The four highest-paid executives at the firms received a total of $6.3 billion in pay over the period, according to the report. Federal tax law allows companies to deduct executive pay based on performance from the firm's tax bill as a business expense. This performance-based compensation includes stock options, stock awards and other types of incentive pay. These 90 companies qualified for tax perks totaling between $1 billion and $1.5 billion over the course of three years, depending on how many types of pay firms actually deducted.
Companies can choose to be more or less aggressive about their tax deductions, and some types of incentive pay exist in a gray area where certain companies choose to claim deductions and others do not. Firms do not make their tax filings public, although they release estimates of overall taxes paid in SEC filings. The IPS-CAF study was based on actual payments to executives that were taxable in the years 2009, 2010 and 2011 that would have qualified for deductions, but whether firms chose to take them is not a matter of public record.
Fix the Debt is one of several austerity advocacy groups tied to Wall Street billionaire Peter Peterson, who started a think tank devoted to deficit reduction in 2008 and has bankrolled multiple public relations campaigns on the issue.
(More here.)
Posted: 05/02/2013 12:00 am EDT | Updated: 05/02/2013 8:26 am EDT
WASHINGTON -- Companies in the Fix the Debt coalition, which advocates for federal austerity policies, qualified for $1 billion or more in tax breaks tied to executive pay packages from 2009 to 2011, according to a new report by the liberal think tanks Institute for Policy Studies and Campaign for America's Future.
The four highest-paid executives at the firms received a total of $6.3 billion in pay over the period, according to the report. Federal tax law allows companies to deduct executive pay based on performance from the firm's tax bill as a business expense. This performance-based compensation includes stock options, stock awards and other types of incentive pay. These 90 companies qualified for tax perks totaling between $1 billion and $1.5 billion over the course of three years, depending on how many types of pay firms actually deducted.
Companies can choose to be more or less aggressive about their tax deductions, and some types of incentive pay exist in a gray area where certain companies choose to claim deductions and others do not. Firms do not make their tax filings public, although they release estimates of overall taxes paid in SEC filings. The IPS-CAF study was based on actual payments to executives that were taxable in the years 2009, 2010 and 2011 that would have qualified for deductions, but whether firms chose to take them is not a matter of public record.
Fix the Debt is one of several austerity advocacy groups tied to Wall Street billionaire Peter Peterson, who started a think tank devoted to deficit reduction in 2008 and has bankrolled multiple public relations campaigns on the issue.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home