In a new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), over 60 percent of corporations in Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Tennessee and Wisconsin paid zero state corporate income taxes in varying periods between 2015 and 2019.

 In Colorado, 71 percent of corporations didn’t pay income taxes between 2017 and 2019, and in Florida, a whopping 92 percent of corporations paid zero income taxes between 2016 and 2019.

Between 12 and 27 percent of corporations with $1 billion in taxable income were able to dodge state corporate income taxes entirely over the four years studied.

 In a handful of states, like Ohio and Texas, corporations aren’t subject to corporate income taxes at all.

the effective state and local corporate tax rate has fallen by half, despite surging corporate profits. In 1989, it was 5.2 percent; as of 2017, it was only 2.6 percent. If effective tax rates for corporations hadn’t started declining in the last few decades, EPI finds, then state and local governments would have taken in $57 billion more in revenue. 

As revenues are declining, states are becoming more and more reliant on federal funding and taxes paid by regular households in order to maintain roads and bridges, provide clean water, and fund education. The data suggests that reduced revenues likely have a direct impact on spending. Declining revenues also negatively affect Black and women workers, who are disproportionately employed with state and local tax revenues.

Along with forcing regular taxpayers to shoulder much of the tax burden, there is no evidence that any of these state and local tax cuts “trickle down” to workers, the report finds. Instead, these tax cuts appear to benefit the richest Americans the most. 

Mary Kay Henry, international president of the Service Employees International Union, expressed frustration over how easy it is for corporations to dodge paying state and local taxes.

“It’s absolutely unconscionable that while the two million members of SEIU who clean buildings, care for the elderly and provide essential public services pay their taxes every year, billionaires and their corporations are getting a free ride.” 

Majority of Corporations Don’t Pay State Income Taxes in at Least 7 States (truthout.org)

Between 2014 and 2018, the 25 wealthiest Americans collectively earned $401bn, but paid just $13.6bn – about 3.4% of that – in taxes, according to a ProPublica investigation into the finances of the wealthiest Americans.

ProPublica looked at the tax records of the top 0.001% wealthiest Americans, using a trove of tax filings from 2013 to 2018 to dive into the wealth of the 400 richest Americans, all of whom earn more than $110m a year.

 It found that the wealthy benefit from lower tax rates on financial assets and deductions from charitable contributions to keep their taxes low.

The difference in tax rates between the wealthiest Americans and the average worker comes down to two critical factors.  

First, the wealthy have their income taxed at a lower rate because much of their wealth is accumulated through investments, like stocks; and second, the wealthy are able to use large charitable donations to get huge deductions.

Instead of the standard paycheck that most American workers get, which includes deductions for social security and Medicare taxes, the wealthiest Americans get their income through financial assets, like stocks, that are generally taxed at a lower rate. The long-term capital gains rate has been 20% since 2013.

Billionaires in tech pay the lowest tax rate, an average of 17% of their income, largely because their wealth comes from such investment income. Bill Gates, whose income from 2013 to 2018 was an average of $2.85bn a year, paid an average effective federal income tax rate of 18.4%. Lauren Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, earned an average of $1.57bn and paid an average tax rate of 14.8%. Ten of the top 15 earners on the list are billionaires who made their money in tech.

In comparison, the average single worker earning $45,000 paid an average tax rate of 21%. A married couple with one child who earns $200,000 paid a rate of 26%. In 2018, the highest top rate on ordinary income, which excludes investments, was 37%, yet the average tax rate for the 400 wealthiest Americans was 22% from 2013 to 2018.

Executives and founders of private equity companies, of which there are 43 on the list, can get taxed at a lower rate through a loophole that allows them to report fees from managing clients’ money as an investment income, which is taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income.

Along with getting taxed at a lower rate through having an investment income, the wealthiest Americans can also write off huge chunks of their income by deducting large charitable donations. Michael Bloomberg, who earned an average of $2.05bn a year from 2013 to 2018, had 66% of his income deducted, giving him one of the lowest tax rates of the group – 4.1%.

Wealthiest Americans pay just 3.4% of income in taxes, investigation reveals | US income inequality | The Guardian

 Refugees fleeing conflicts or persecution do not have the luxury of entering Britain legally. If they had the time and opportunity to apply for a UK visa they would not in essence be refugees. Seeking asylum routinely involves entering a territory without prior permission.

Regards the Boris Johnson and Priti Patel planned deportation of refugees Gillian Triggs, the assistant high commissioner at the UNHCR,  accused the UK of “attempting to shift its burden to a developing country” and warned that the arrangement signed off by Patel “would not comply with the UK’s international legal responsibilities”, adding: “All the indications are that it will be unworkable.”

The proposals seemed designed to appeal to anti-migrant sentiment in the UK, she suggested.

 Triggs said, “… we are in an environment in which populist governments will appeal to their rightwing, anti-migrant sentiment and this would presumably be part of that.”

Triggs also warned that the UK was introducing a discriminatory approach towards refugees, offering an uncapped scheme for asylum seekers from Ukraine and a “draconian” system for refugees from other countries.

“At the political level, we are seeing levels of discrimination,” Triggs said. “We are deeply concerned that the processes appear to be discriminatory. One of the fundamental principles of international law is non-discrimination on the grounds of race or ethnicity or nationality.”

Rwanda’s population density is almost double that of Britain’s. It is a country almost twice as crowded as ours. Yet per capita it already hosts five times as many refugees as the UK. As well as hosting Congolese and Burundian refugees, Rwanda has recently offered itself as a host country for the emergency evacuation of refugees trapped in dire conditions in Libya.  Rwanda is among the world’s 25 poorest countries. The UK is among the world’s 10 richest countries. 

UN refugee agency condemns Boris Johnson’s Rwanda asylum plan | Immigration and asylum | The Guardian

 Last month there was a lot of fuss about the non-dom status of Akshata Murthy, wife of the Chancellor Rishi Sunak. This meant she did not pay tax in the UK on her income from elsewhere (she is the daughter of a big Indian IT boss and is said to be richer than the queen).

Socialists do not take sides on how the capitalists divide up the payment of taxes among themselves, but one aspect of this whole discussion was well worthy of comment. Many reports referred to Murthy’s earnings. But her income, from dividends and profits, was certainly not earned by her.

Workers earn when they sell their labour power for a wage, whether it is in the factory, office, shop, call centre, school, hospital, building site or what have you. They have to work for an employer, enabling whoever employs them to make a profit.

In contrast is unearned income, which is ‘income not acquired through work. Examples of unearned income, also known as passive income, include interest from savings accounts, bond interest, alimony, and dividends from stocks’ (Investopedia). The dividends, and presumably various forms of interest too, constitute Murthy’s income, which is certainly not earned in the ways that the wages or salaries of the vast majority of people are earned.

So when you read about the supposed ‘earnings’ of the super-rich, the Musks, the Zuckerbergs, think a little about what that means. They do not get their vast wealth from their own labour and do not earn it: they become rich through exploiting the rest of us. ‘Unearned income’ is in their case a euphemism for exploitation.

PB

 The World Bank has estimated that for each one percentage point increase in food prices, 10 million people are thrown into extreme poverty worldwide. 

Rich countries avoided the worst economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic but poorer ones continue to deal with debilitating debt, the UN said in a report released on Wednesday, contributing to a global “great finance divide.”

According to the report, 77 million people slipped into poverty in 2021 as governments struggled to service debts and secure early vaccine access.

Amina Mohammed, the UN Deputy Secretary-General said the new findings were “alarming” and called for “collective responsibility to ensure hundreds of millions of people are lifted out of hunger and poverty.” Mohammed of the UN warned “it would be a tragedy” if rich donor nations increased military expenditures at the cost of cutting aid to developing countries.

Produced by the UN’s Inter-agency Task Force on Financing for Development, the report found that significantly higher borrowing rates for poorer countries had particularly hamstrung pandemic recovery and development spending there.

The poorest countries pumped billions into servicing debts and were forced to cut spending on education and infrastructure, the report noted, while developed countries could borrow far more at “ultra-low” interest rates and stave off the worst economic with comparative ease.

On average, rich countries spend 3.5% of their revenue on servicing debt while less rich nations use up to 14% of revenue, four times more, according to the UN.

The report said some 20% of countries will not return to pre-2019 levels of GDP per capita by the end of 2023 — that’s before absorbing the costs of the Ukraine war.

Ukraine war is likely to burden poorer countries further. Ukraine and Russia are some of the world’s biggest food and fuel exporters and additional impacts of the war on developing economies are already becoming visible. Sri Lanka defaulted on its debts this week as the country’s foreign exchange coffers dry up. In Nigeria and Kenya, fuel shortages have crippled businesses and forced tired residents into long fuel queues. Even developed economies, including the US and most of Europe, have been struggling with a sudden spike in inflation after more than a decade where inflation had been difficult to stimulate.

The new UN report also comes as poorer countries suffer the worst effects of climate change because of limited funds to adapt.

UN warns of ′great finance divide′ as Covid shocks, debt, hits poorest hardest | News | DW | 13.04.2022

Loss Leaders

The Great Helmsman! Father of the Nation!

Or king, or queen, or tsar, or president

Or panjandrum…whatever the intent,

Good or bad, honorific adulation

Sits ill with democracy. To be led

Is to surrender self to other’s whim,

To live or die in another’s name:

Cenotaphs list the obedient dead.

Someone motivated by vanity,

Someone focused on the national mission,

Someone blinded by personal ambition,

Someone with no sense of humanity,

Someone who’s so qualified to succeed

As leader, should not be allowed to lead.

D. A.

 Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) says the world does not give equal attention to emergencies affecting black and white people. Only a fraction of the help given to Ukraine was given to other humanitarian crises.

 Public sector pay for jobs such as NHS workers, teachers and civil servants fell further behind price rises in the three months to February, figures show.

   “Without immediate radical action, we could be witnessing the most profound collapse of humanity into extreme poverty and suffering in memory,” said Oxfam’s international executive director, Gabriela Bucher.

The rising price of food caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increased energy costs could push a quarter of a billion more people into extreme poverty, Oxfam has warned.

Indebted governments could be forced to cut public spending to meet the rising cost of importing fuel and food.

The World Bank had already estimated that 198 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty this year as a result of the pandemic. 

But Oxfam estimates that 65 million more people are at risk if the invasion of Ukraine and rising energy prices are taken into account. 

It also estimates that 28 million more people will be left undernourished as a result.

Quarter of a billion people now face extreme poverty, warns Oxfam | Global development | The Guardian