"A smorgasbord of 43 business and energy tax breaks, collectively worth $67 billion this year, was packed into the emergency tax legislation that avoided the so-called “fiscal cliff.’’ In reality, any gain from taxing the rich was easily eclipsed by waves of tax cuts in the bill — including the $67 billion in the corporate tax breaks that had been resurrected at the last minute."
Oh, so the the RICH got a TAX BREAK out of the TAX INCREASE, huh?
"Tax lobbyists help businesses reap windfalls; While Congress fights over ways to cut spending and the deficit, generous breaks for corporations pass with little notice" by Christopher Rowland | Globe Staff, March 17, 2013
WASHINGTON — Lobbying for special tax treatment produced a spectacular return for Whirlpool Corp., courtesy of Congress and those who pay the bills, the American taxpayers.
By investing just $1.8 million over two years in payments for Washington lobbyists, Whirlpool secured the renewal of lucrative energy tax credits for making high-efficiency appliances that it estimates will be worth a combined $120 million for 2012 and 2013. Such breaks have helped the company keep its total tax expenses below zero in recent years.
Meaning they not only didn't pay taxes, they got a taxpayer-funded check from the government.
The return on that lobbying investment: about 6,700 percent.
These are the sort of returns that have attracted growing swarms of corporate tax lobbyists to the Capitol over the last decade — the sorts of payoffs typically reserved for gamblers and gold miners. Even as Congress says it is digging for every penny of savings, lobbyists are anything but sequestered; they are ratcheting up their efforts to protect and even increase their clients’ tax breaks.
Related: Budgeting My Posts
Yeah, your social security needs to be cut.
The Senate approved tax benefits for Whirlpool and a host of other corporations early on New Year’s Day, a couple of hours after the ball dropped over Times Square and champagne corks began popping. A smorgasbord of 43 business and energy tax breaks, collectively worth $67 billion this year, was packed into the emergency tax legislation that avoided the so-called “fiscal cliff.’’
In the days that followed, the tax handouts for business were barely mentioned as President Obama and members of Congress hailed the broader effects of the dramatic legislation, which prevented income tax increases on the middle class and raised top marginal tax rates for the wealthy.
You are being PLAYED FOR FOOLS, America!!!!
Yet the generous breaks awarded to narrow sectors of the American business community are just as symptomatic of Washington dysfunction as the serial budget crises that have gripped the capital since 2011. Leaders of both parties have repeatedly declared their intention to make the corporate income tax code fairer by lowering rates and ending special breaks, while intense lobbying, ideological divides, and unending political fights on Capitol Hill block most progress.
I wonder how they were able to get those break$, don't you?
The result: the most visible signs of cross-party cooperation on corporate taxes are among regional groups of lawmakers who team up, out of parochial interest, to maintain special treatment for businesses in their home states.
Oh, we FINALLY GET BIPARTISANSHIP when it comes to CORPORATE TAX BREAKS!
In the absence of meaningful change, corporations like Whirlpool continue to pursue the exponential returns available from tax lobbying....
That's intended, folks. The difference in parties you hear about every two years around election time is nothing but s*** show fooleys!
Whirlpool had plenty of company on New Year’s, including multinational corporations with offshore investment earnings, Hollywood companies that shoot films in the United States, railroads that invest in track maintenance, sellers of energy produced by windmills and solar panels, and producers of electric motorcycles.
Related: Slow Saturday Special: Boston Burning For Movie Sets
Does profitable Hollywood really need a tax check from the state while you get served austerity?
Their special treatment is a fraction of a broader constellation of what the federal Joint Committee on Taxation estimates will be $154 billion in special corporate tax breaks in 2013, contained in 135 individual provisions of the tax code.
But social services need to be cut!
Watchdogs and tax analysts denounce these favors as a hidden form of spending that amounts to corporate welfare. In essence, these “tax expenditures’’ are no different than mailing subsidy checks directly to companies to pad their bottom lines....
Actually, that is EXACTLY what they DO!!
For instance, GE paid "no federal tax bill last year, even though it turned a $14.2 billion profit" that got GE a $3.2 billion refund.
How do you get a "refund" when you didn't pay any taxes?
Whirlpool has a powerful Michigan delegation behind it, including key committee chairmen of tax-writing and energy committees in the House. In response to questions from the Globe, the company said its special tax breaks led it to save “hundreds’’ of American jobs from the effects of the recession....
PFFFFFFFFTT!
But its federal income taxes have been minimal in recent years, thanks in large part to tax credits and deferrals, according to public filings. Its total income taxes — including foreign, federal, and state — were negative-$436 million in 2011, negative-$64 million in 2010, and negative-$61 million in 2009. It carries forward federal credits as “deferred tax assets’’ that it can use to lower future tax bills....
Of course, this government works for you, average American citizen.
Whirlpool did not provide a specific number of jobs retained. The benefits were not sufficient to protect Whirlpool’s employees at a refrigerator manufacturing plant in Arkansas. Last summer, the company laid off more than 800 hourly workers, closed the factory, and moved manufacturing of those refrigerators to Mexico. It was part of an overall reduction of 5,000 in its workforce announced in 2011 in North America and Europe.
Just SAVING JOBS!!
Congress “made a big mistake,’’ by authorizing hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits for Whirlpool based on arguments that the company would retain domestic jobs, said Howard Carruth, a machine maintenance worker and union official who began work at the plant in 1969 and lost his job last year when the plant closed.
Yeah, and you KNOW WHO is PAYING FOR IT, taxpayers!
“They really hurt the economy around here,’’ he said. “I blame the corporate greed.’’
The closing also transformed Carruth from loyal to embittered customer: “We bought Whirlpool for our own house, for family and friends. If one of those goes out in my house right now, it will not be replaced by Whirlpool.’’
They don't care. They only care about one thing, and I will only give you one gue$$ as to what.
Many companies would probably pay much higher taxes — including Whirlpool — if Congress eliminated special breaks and lowered the income tax rate to 25 percent from the current 35 percent.
Except they are NOT PAYING ANY NOW!
An extra benefit of winning government subsidies through the tax code: Recipients remain immune from spending cuts like the automatic “sequester’’ imposed on March 1.
Americans, you are being f***ing had big time!!!
So the PROMISE of SOCIAL SECURITY can be BROKEN, but not the BLE$$ED and $ACRO$ANCT CORPORATE WELFARE!
Called the “tax extenders,’’ 43 credits, deferrals, and exceptions for general business and energy firms were lumped into the fiscal cliff legislation.
And it was SO HURRIEDLY PASSED that NO ONE was able to READ IT, right?
The returns on lobbying investments companies realized when the Senate passed its fiscal cliff bill helps explain why Washington tax lobbyists remain in demand:
■ Multinational companies and banks, including General Electric, Citigroup, and Ford Motor Co., with investment earnings from overseas accounts won tax breaks collectively worth $11 billion — a return on their two-year lobbying investment of at least 8,200 percent, according to a Globe analysis of lobbying reports.
Related:
"Ford Motor Co. posted a record North American pretax profit of $8.3 billion last year"
"Citigroup reported a fourth-quarter profit of $1.2 billion."
I gue$$ that's why big banks are booming.
■ Hollywood production companies received a $430 million tax benefit for filming within the United States. As a result, companies like Walt Disney Co., Viacom, Sony, and Time Warner — with the help of the Motion Picture Association of America, chaired by former Connecticut senator Christopher J. Dodd — realized a return on their lobbying investment of about 860 percent.
They are JUST LOOKING to GIVE TAX LOOT AWAY! They need to be paid just for filming in the U.S.?
Related: Disney chief made $37.1 million in year of record profit
Did they really need the subsidy check?
And now they are laying people off?
Mickey Mouse can go fuck himself!!
Also see: Senate Sends Along Financial Fraud Bill
That failure capped his career, huh?
Isn't Dodd the guy that got sweetheart deals from Countrywide?
What a scum. I'll never forget the fly that landed on that pos during a debate.
■ Railroads lobbied on a broad array of issues, a portion of which yielded $331 million for two years’ worth of track maintenance tax credits. Return on investment: at least 260 percent.
■ Even at the low end of the economic scale the returns can be large. Two West Coast companies that manufacture electric motorcycles — Brammo Inc. of Oregon, and Zero Motorcycle Inc. of California — reported combined lobbying expenditures of $200,000 in 2011 and 2012. They won tax subsidies payable to the consumers who buy their products worth an estimated $7 million. The electric motorcycle market stands to receive a return on that investment of up to 3,500 percent.
Like each of the industries that won special treatment in the Jan. 1 “extenders’’ corporate tax measure, the electric motorcycle lobby argued that tax breaks would protect or create jobs. Electric motorcycle manufacturers only employ hundreds of workers now, said Jay Friedland, Zero Motorcycles vice president, but could employ thousands in the future.
That f***ing argument has become nothing more than an avenue of extortion.
And they wonder why we hate bu$ine$$?
“There are definitely provisions in the extenders that people scratch their heads at, but if your goal is to build a replacement for the pure oil economy, this is the kind of industry you want to make an investment on,’’ he said.
Measuring the rewards for lobbying on individual tax provisions is by nature imprecise, especially for large corporations that weigh in on dozens of issues. Companies file blanket disclosure reports that do not break down their lobbying expenditures by individual issue.
Publicly traded companies like Whirlpool with narrower lobbying agendas, and who publish their annual tax credit benefits in shareholder disclosure reports, are easier to track.
In addition to seeking tax breaks, corporate lobbyists also seek to protect favorable elements that are already baked into US tax policy. Private equity firms, for instance, fight each year to defend the tax treatment of “carried interest’’ payments for investment managers. Those payments are treated as a capital gain by the Internal Revenue Service, and thus taxed at a much lower rate, 20 percent in 2013, than the top income-tax rate of 39.6 percent.
The best-known example of a millionaire benefiting from “carried interest’’ tax treatment was Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, who reduced his individual tax rate to below 15 percent by applying the provision to his extensive Bain Capital profits.
Yup, tax system is working for him and his ilk, not you and yours.
The publicity surrounding Romney’s tax returns fueled an onslaught by critics. The private equity industry’s trade group and the nation’s largest firms spent close to $28 million on lobbying in 2011 and 2012, according to public records. So far, they have won — a benefit that the Obama administration has estimated is worth at least $1 billion over two years. The return on investment for maintaining the status quo on the carried-interest tax rate over two years was at least 3,500 percent.
The returns show how cheap it is, relatively speaking, to buy political influence....
Critics lament that fiscal combat between Republicans and Democrats is preventing serious reform of the business tax code.
“What we’re doing is running a Soviet-style, five-year industrial plan for those industries that are clever enough in their lobbying to ask all of us to subsidize their business profits,’’ said Edward D. Kleinbard, a former chief of staff at the Joint Committee on Taxation and now a law professor at the University of Southern California.
And you thought I was out of line with the AmeriKa with a capital K?
“These are perfect examples of Congress putting its thumb on the scale of the free market,’’ he said. “I’ll be damned if I know why I should be subsidizing Whirlpool.’’
I know why: $$$$$
Congress has the opportunity every two years to stop doling out a good portion of these favors. A peculiarity of many special tax breaks is that Congress places “sunset’’ provisions on them.
So why don't they?
Some observers say passing temporary tax breaks gives lawmakers an ongoing source of campaign funds — from companies that are constantly trying to curry favor to get their tax credits renewed.
Oh.
Others say it’s because making these tax rates permanent would require a 10-year accounting method — a step that would show how much each provision is truly costing taxpayers.
Whatever the reason, Congress has made many of them quasi-permanent, by simply extending them again and again.
That's why I never want government starting something. Once they get going the $pigot never $huts off.
“It’s the same cowardice that Congress has on everything. They don’t want to be truthful about what they are doing,’’ said Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican and persistent critic of government waste and special deals in the tax code.
Coburn voted against the raft of “extenders’’ when they were previewed and approved by the Senate Finance Committee at a hearing in August 2012. He offered amendments to strip individual tax breaks out of the package — including the high-efficiency appliance tax credit for Whirlpool and GE — but they were shot down by the majority Democrats on the committee, led by chairman Max Baucus, of Montana.
More on Baucus below.
“It’s not about tax policy, it’s about benefiting the political class and the well-connected and the well-heeled in this country,’’ Coburn said in an interview. “We’re benefiting the politicians because they get credit for it. And we are benefiting those who can afford to have greater access than somebody else.’’
Well what do you know? A good Republican -- from Oklahoma of all places!
Whirlpool pursues its Capitol Hill agenda from an office suite it shares on the seventh floor of a building on Pennsylvania Avenue that is loaded with similar lobbying shops and sits just a few blocks from the Capitol. Across the street, lines of tourists wait to view the original Declaration of Independence and the Constitution at the National Archives.
Whirlpool and other appliance manufacturers won tax breaks for producing high-efficiency washing machines, dishwashers, and refrigerators in 2005, as part of a sweeping package of energy incentives approved by the Republican-controlled Congress.
But that victory was just the beginning of a prolonged effort. Whirlpool and other appliance manufacturers must perpetually work to win renewal of their credits every two years or so. In recent years, the company has spent around $1 million annually on lobbying, up from just $110,000 in 2005.
The fiscal cliff legislation represented the third time the appliance tax credits were included in a tax extenders bill.
We were told if that didn't pass the economy would collapse and we would be in a Depression.
Defending the credits has become easier, said a person who has participated in Whirlpool’s lobbying efforts. The extenders, this person explained, is an interlocking package of deals, each with a particular senator or representative demanding its inclusion.
“Some of it is the inherent stickiness of something that is already in the tax code,’’ said the person, who was not authorized to speak about Whirlpool’s efforts and requested anonymity. “If they open Pandora’s box and start taking things out, it’s politically very difficult.’’
The paradoxical posture of senators of both parties was on full display at the hearing last summer of the Senate Finance Committee to consider the most recent package of tax extenders. Some members lamented the system of doling out tax breaks, pledging to reform the corporate code, even as they defended individual items in the legislation and voted to approve it.
It's called hypocri$y.
The senators said they wanted to provide stability and predictability for businesses that had come to rely on the temporary provisions to stay afloat and retain workers....
Even though it is a GOLDEN AGE for CORPORATE PROFITS and the JOB CUTS KEEP COMING!
Former senator John F. Kerry, another member of the committee, said certain industry sectors need temporary tax subsidies. Oil and gas companies, Kerry explained, benefit from permanent tax breaks in the law, while the wind, solar, and other alternative energy interests are forced to come to Congress “hat in hand’’ every two years.
Related: The Antiwar DemocraPs of the 2008 Election
Kerry made how much of his war stock holdings?
Debt Committee Failure Capstone of Kerry's Career
Oh, he had inside information, huh?
Buffett Bloodied By Heinz
More insider trading, 'eh?
The Kerry Confirmation
Yeah, he's a crook.
Coming “hat in hand’’ in this context means deploying teams of lobbyists, mostly former Capitol Hill aides. They left their government jobs with an understanding of the tax code and, working in the private sector, are able to leverage their political connections to gain access to congressional leaders and staff.
Among the busiest and most influential of these tax-lobbying teams is Capitol Tax Partners, a firm headed by Lindsay Hooper, and his partner, Jonathan Talisman. Hooper served as a tax counsel to a senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee in the 1980s. Talisman held the post of assistant treasury secretary for tax policy during the Clinton administration. They did not respond to requests for comment.
Capitol Tax Partners lobbied on behalf of 48 companies in 2012, according to its mandatory disclosure reports. That client roster includes a bunch of companies that won tax breaks in the fiscal cliff bill: Whirlpool (energy-efficiency tax credits), State Street Bank (tax treatment of offshore investment income), and the Motion Picture Association of America (tax breaks for domestic film production), to name a few....
Well, we already know about Hollywood.
Related: State Street Stealers
They received a "refund" of HOW MANY MILLION? And when did they build up losses?
Also see: State Street CEO earned $15.6m
Well, at least you know where that money came from, taxpayers.
State Street to lay off 630
That's creating jobs even as it reports higher profits.
State Street latest to win tax break on the waterfront
And they are taking in more money than ever, huh?
In reality, any gain from taxing the rich was easily eclipsed by waves of tax cuts in the bill — including the $67 billion in the corporate tax breaks that had been resurrected at the last minute and voted on early on Jan. 1.
“They finally do it, and the extenders were bigger than the tax increases on the rich,’’ said Robert McIntyre, director of the advocacy group Citizens for Tax Justice. “Wow. What was this fight about?’’
We were told by the mouthpiece ma$$ media and the politicians that it was about wealth inequality and getting the rich to pay their fair share.
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Now about Baucus:
"Lobbying lucrative for Senator Baucus’s ex-aides; Access to lawmaker yielded hefty tax breaks for clients" by Eric Lipton | New York Times, April 07, 2013
WASHINGTON — Restaurant chains like McDonald’s want to keep their lucrative tax credit for hiring veterans. Altria, the tobacco company, wants to cut the corporate tax rate. And Sapphire Energy, a small alternative energy company, is determined to protect a tax incentive it believes could turn algae into a popular motor fuel.
As Congress prepares to debate a rewrite of the nation’s tax code, this diverse set of businesses has at least one strategy in common: They have retained firms that employ lobbyists who are former aides to Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which will have a crucial role in shaping any legislation.
No other lawmaker on Capitol Hill has such a sizable constellation of former aides working as tax lobbyists, representing blue-chip clients that include telecommunications businesses, oil companies, retailers, and financial firms, according to an analysis by LegiStorm, an online database that tracks congressional staff members and lobbying.
At least 28 aides who worked for the Montana Democrat since he became the committee chairman in 2001 have lobbied on tax issues during the Obama administration — more than any other current member of Congress, according to the analysis of lobbying filings performed for The New York Times.
‘‘K Street is literally littered with former Baucus staffers,’’ said Jade West, an executive at a wholesalers’ trade association that relies on a former finance panel aide, Mary Burke Baker. ‘‘It opens doors that allow you to make the case.’’
Like Baker, many of those lobbyists have saved their clients millions — in some cases, billions — of dollars after Baucus backed their requests to extend certain corporate tax perks, provisions that were adopted as part of the ‘‘fiscal cliff’’ legislation in January.
Baucus aides who later became lobbyists helped financial firms save $11.2 billion in tax deferments and helped secure a $222 million tax benefit that is shared with the liquor industry.
Sean Neary, a spokesman for Baucus, said the senator had regularly rejected requests from those lobbyists for provisions benefiting their clients, like an appeal from one former aide, Pat Bousliman, now working as a wind industry lobbyist, to extend an alternative energy loan guarantee program that expired in 2011.
Baucus’s decisions are based on the merits of the policies, Neary said, not on who is advocating for them. ‘‘The fact is, oftentimes good policy can indirectly benefit someone,’’ he said. ‘‘That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.’’
Baucus, who has spent nearly his entire professional career in Congress, declined a request for an interview. But Neary said that every action the senator takes is motivated by his commitment to voters.
It's $ickening to read this $hit.
Several veteran Capitol Hill aides said it was naive to suggest that former aides could extract special favors from their one-time bosses unless what they were pushing for had broad support. But the former aides still bring an advantage to the corporations that hire them.
‘‘It does mean you will have someone who knows how the levers of power are pushed or how to push the levers, and who can describe to you how situations are going to play out based on their years of experience,’’ said Jim Manley, a former aide to Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader. Manley now works at a Washington lobbying and communications firm, QGA Public Affairs.
In recent interviews, four former aides to Baucus said their ties to him heightened their appeal to potential clients. The link also helped justify their salaries, in some cases $500,000 or higher, more than double or triple their Capitol Hill paychecks.
Former Senate aides who become lobbyists must wait a year before they can contact Baucus or his staff on behalf of a client, according to Senate ethics rules. Staying active in their circle, one former aide said, also requires that they help Baucus’s political career, through fund-raising and other assistance.
At a gathering last month near the Capitol, Paul Wilkins, Baucus’s chief of staff, talked about the millions of dollars Baucus will need to raise for his reelection campaign next year.
‘‘It allows us to scare off opponents,’’ Wilkins told the group. ‘‘It is the basis of everything that we do. So thank you for your support and everything you have done for Senator Baucus.’’
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There is nothing worse on this earth than DISINGENUOUS DEMOCRATS!
Also see:
You got $crewed, 'murkn.
