G7

Capos of capital are gathering,

Exclusive of common lives,

Beyond a ring of steel drawn round St. Ives

Wherein they can begin their blathering.

There’ll be solemn pledges and pious pleas,

Promises to end hunger, give foreign aid,

While lowering global warming by degrees,

Although nothing that might restrict free trade.

The don of dons from the USA,

Bringing the power of his mob in play,

Will invite everyone to have their say,

But then expect to have his own way.

Whatever is agreed or rescinded,

Pursuit of profits must remain unhindered. 

D. A. 

 Following up earlier posts on Big Business and dodging taxes,  55 U.S. corporations that paid no federal corporate income tax last year have spent a combined $450 million on political campaign contributions and lobbying—including for lower taxes—according to a report. 

‘The Price of Zero’, cites figures showing that at least 55 U.S. corporations avoided paying any corporate income tax in 2020 on a combined pretax income of $40.5 billion.

“Had these companies paid a tax rate of 21%—the current federal rate—they would have owed the federal government $8.5 billion,” the report notes. “Not only did these companies not pay taxes, but nearly all also got money back from the government, receiving $3.5 billion in tax rebates, bringing the total 2020 tax giveaways for these 55 companies to $12 billion.”

The companies invested a combined $408 million in lobbying and $42 million in campaign contributions over the past three election cycles. FedEx spent the most of any of the 55 companies—$71 million on lobbying and campaign contributions—between 2015 and 2020. Charter Communications ($64 million), American Electric Power ($42 million), Duke Energy ($37 million), and Textron ($22 million) round out the top five spenders.

Forty-seven of the 55 companies analyzed in the paper reported spending on lobbying at some point during the five-year period. Thirty-five of those firms acknowledged lobbying specifically on taxation issues. Twenty-two of the companies lobbied for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), Republican legislation signed into law by Trump. The TCJA lowered the federal corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%, enabled companies to write off certain capital investments for five years, and made it easier for U.S. corporations to avoid paying taxes on foreign income. The TCJA gave more than 80% of tax cuts to the nation’s richest 1% while raising taxes on over 90 million middle-class families and encouraging the outsourcing of U.S.-based jobs.

“The lobbying, campaign contributions, and tax avoidance by these 55 companies is a never-ending cycle in which the companies spend to win tax breaks, then use the money saved from those breaks to try to get more,” the report concludes.

55 corporations paying no federal tax last year spent $450 million on lobbying and campaigns: report – Alternet.org

The wealth gap in China is stark.

 Stopping short of accusing the Chinese government of committing genocide due to the lack of full information of what is going on, Amnesty International has published further evidence of human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region of China, which it says has become a “dystopian hellscape” for hundreds of thousands of  Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities subjected to mass internment and torture. Amnesty said counter-terrorism could not reasonably account for mass detention, and that the Chinese government’s actions showed a “clear intent to target parts of Xinjiang’s population collectively on the basis of religion and ethnicity and to use severe violence and intimidation to root out Islamic religious beliefs and Turkic Muslim ethno-cultural practices”.

Those taken to the network of camps in Xinjiang were “subjected to a ceaseless indoctrination campaign as well as physical and psychological torture”. In the internment camps, they are not allowed to practise Islam, forbidden from using their mother tongue and forced to attend classes where they studied Mandarin and Chinese Communist Party propaganda. Torture methods, according to the report, included “beatings, electric shocks, stress positions, the unlawful use of restraints including being locked in a tiger chair, (a steel chairs with leg irons and handcuffs that restrain the body in painful positions ), sleep deprivation, being hung from a wall, being subjected to extremely cold temperatures, and solitary confinement”.

Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, said, “It should shock the conscience of humanity that massive numbers of people have been subjected to brainwashing, torture and other degrading treatment in internment camps, while millions more live in fear amid a vast surveillance apparatus.” She also accused UN Secretary General António Guterres of “failing to act according to his mandate”, explaining that Guterres “has not denounced the situation, he has not called for an international investigation”,  Callamard told the BBC. “It is incumbent on him to protect the values upon which the United Nations has been founded, and certainly not to stay silent in front of crimes against humanity.”

The author of the Amnesty report, Jonathan Loeb, stated that the organisation’s research “did not reveal that all the evidence of the crime of genocide had occurred” but that it had so far “only scratched the surface”.

China has created a ‘dystopian hellscape’ in Xinjiang, Amnesty report says – BBC News

“We are losing ground in the fight to end child labour,” UNICEF chief Henrietta Fore told reporters 

The world has marked the first rise in child labour in two decades and the coronavirus crisis threatens to push millions of more youngsters toward the same fate, the United Nations said.

The International Labour Organization and the UN children’s agency UNICEF said the number in child labour stood at 160 million at the start of 2020 — an increase of 8.4 million in four years. Children aged between five and 11 accounted for over half of the global figure.

Boys were significantly more likely to be affected, accounting for 97 of the 160 million children toiling in child labour at the start of 2020. But the gender gap narrows by half when household chores performed for at least 21 hours per week are counted, the report said. Particularly concerning, perhaps, was the significant increase seen in children between the ages of five and 17 who are doing so-called hazardous work, which is deemed to affect a child’s development, education or health. This can include toiling in dangerous industries, like mining or with heavy machinery, and working for more than 43 hours a week, which makes schooling next to impossible.

A full 79 million children were considered to be doing such hazardous work at the start of 2020, up 6.5 million from four years earlier, the report showed. 

The study revealed that most child labour is concentrated in the agriculture sector, which accounts for 70 percent of the global total, or 112 million children. Some 20 percent of child labour meanwhile happens in the service sector and around 10 percent in industry, it found.

The increase began before the pandemic hit and marks a dramatic reversal of a downward trend that had seen child labour numbers shrink by 94 million between the year 2000 and 2016. Just as the Covid-19 crisis was beginning to pick up steam, nearly one in 10 children globally were stuck in child labour, with sub-Saharan Africa the worst affected. While the percentage of children in child labour remained the same as in 2016, population growth meant that the numbers rose significantly.

The pandemic risks worsening the situation significantly, the agencies said. They warned that unless urgent action is taken to help ballooning numbers of families plunging into poverty, nearly 50 million more kids could be forced into child labour over the next two years. If the latest projections of poverty increases due to the pandemic materialise, another nine million children will be pushed into child labour by the end of 2022.

But that number could potentially be more than five times higher, according to UNICEF statistics specialist Claudia Cappa. 

“If social protection coverage slips from the current levels… as a result of austerity measures and other factors, the number of children falling into child labour can go up (an additional) 46 million” by the end of next year, she explained.

 UNICEF chief Henrietta Fore stressed that “the Covid-19 crisis is making a bad situation even worse. Now, well into a second year of global lockdowns, school closures, economic disruptions, and shrinking national budgets, families are forced to make heart-breaking choices.”

The greatest increase in child labour was seen in sub-Saharan Africa, where population growth, recurrent crises, extreme poverty and inadequate social protection measures pushed an additional 16.6 million children into child labour since 2016, the report found. Nearly a quarter of children aged five to 17 years old in sub-Saharan Africa are already in child labour, compared to 2.3 percent in Europe and North America.

Child labour swells for first time in two decades: UN – France 24

The U.K. has banned the sale of “lethal” military equipment to China since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. However, U.K. government has authorized the sale of £2.6-billion worth of military and civilian equipment with potential military use to China in the past three years, government figures show.

Last year saw a tripling in exports to China of “dual use” items defined as “civilian goods with a military purpose.” Some £1.6-billion worth were authorised in 2020, compared to £526-million in 2019, despite China being identified by the British government as “an increasing risk to U.K. interests” and “the biggest state-based threat to the U.K.’s economic security.” The U.K. military identifies China as posing a particular challenge in the South China Sea, where Beijing is building bases on disputed atolls in the Spratly and Paracel Islands, which are also claimed by other states in the region.  In March, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said China was a “threat” in the contested sea.

Most British exports were for “dual-use” equipment but £53-million worth classified purely as “military” went to China over the three years 2018-20, including components for combat aircraft and military support aircraft. Other items licensed for use by China included military communications equipment and technology for air defense systems. 

Britain is also aiding China’s naval capacity. Ministers approved two export licences in 2019 for components for combat naval vessels that were identified as being for “end use by the [military] Navy.” 

The previous year, approvals were given to sell components for combat naval vessels and for military radars where China’s navy was also stated to be the end user. Other British exports likely to benefit the Chinese navy have included technology for combat naval vessels and for “military patrol/assault craft.”

In addition to supporting the navy and air force, hundreds of licences have been approved by U.K. ministers for the sale of “information security equipment” and “imaging cameras” to China. It is not clear if such exports could aid the Chinese state’s domestic surveillance capabilities since the items are not specified in government documents. The U.K. ’s partial arms embargo on China forbids the export of equipment “which might be used for internal repression”.

Sam Walton, the chief executive of the Free Tibet campaign, said: “We have seen fine words from this government condemning the repression in Tibet, the Uyghur genocide and the destruction on democracy in Hong Kong. But their actions once again show their words to be worthless. Britain cannot condemn China’s jackboot whilst heeling that same boot.”

UK Hypes China ‘Threat’ While Selling Country Billions in Military-Related Equipment – Consortiumnews

The World Socialist Movement takes the uncommon, often unpopular, but very much the orthodox Marxist position in accordance with the Labour Theory of Value that the burden of taxation, despite a few minor exceptions, falls upon the capitalist class. When particular businesses cheat by tax evasion, they are stealing from their fellow capitalists by not paying their “fair” share of the revenue for the upkeep of government services. We already see that there are international efforts to unify different countries tax codes to close down loopholes that enable various ways to avoid taxes, as well as calls to reverse decades of tax-cuts given to the wealthy.

This leads to our stance that we don’t really care about the rich tax dodgers, although it does reveal their hypocritical nonsense of being patriotic and law-abiding. Indeed some of the wealthiest claim to be philanthropists who donate to charities but it exposes the undemocratic attitude that spending policy is to be decided by these individual capitalists and not collectively by their “executive committee”, the State. 

So when it comes to naming and shaming the rich for tax dishonesty, we say it is a crime far less than the thievery from working people of the fruits of our labour-power through the exploitation of the extraction of surplus-value. But we take a feeling of schadenfreude when those “captains of industry” are exposed as the crooks that they are.

 The wealth of the 25 richest Americans collectively jumped by $401bn from 2014 to 2018 – but they paid $13.6bn in income tax over those years. The richest 25 Americans paid a “true tax rate” of just 3.4%. By contrast, the median American household paid 14% in federal taxes,

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in 2007  paid no federal taxes. In 2011, when he had a net worth of $18bn, he was again able to pay no federal taxes – and even received a $4,000 tax credit for his children. Bezos’s wealth grew by $99bn over the four-year period, but he paid a true tax rate of 0.98%.

Tesla’s Elon Musk’s paid nothing in 2018. Over the four-year period, Musk paid 3.27%

 Warren Buffett, founder of the investment firm Berkshire Hathaway, paid $23.7m in taxes from 2014 to 2018, on a total reported income of $125m. But Buffett’s wealth grew by $24.3bn, meaning he had a “true tax rate” of 0.1%.

Michael Bloomberg with a net worth of $59bn paid 1.3%.

“America’s billionaires avail themselves of tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people,” ProPublica reported. “Their wealth derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property. Those gains are not defined by US laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell.”

Richest 25 Americans reportedly paid ‘true tax rate’ of 3.4% as wealth rocketed | Business | The Guardian

 The body of a toddler washed up on Norway’s shore on New Year’s Day. It took the Norweigan authorities more than five months from that date to confirm his identity through retrieving and matching DNA.

 He was 15-month-old Artin Iran Nezhad. Artin’s family – his mother, Shiva Mohammad Panahi, his father, Rasul Iran Nezhad, his sister, Anita, nine, and brother, Armin, six –  all drowned on 27 October 2020 trying to seek a new home in the UK by crossing the English Channel.

 “They had a lot of hope about making a new life in the UK. Shiva had many beautiful dreams for the children. She wanted them to get a good education at schools in the UK and then go on to university. Anita wanted to become an actress and had already passed some acting screen tests. Of course, Artin did not understand about crossing the Channel and reaching the UK, but the two older children did.” an asylum seeker who he knew the family well told the Guardian.

 Had the family had money to pay a more expensive smuggler, he believes they might all still be alive today. Artin’s family had originally approached a smuggler offering a relatively safe passage but that person had rejected them because they could not afford to pay him what he wanted. “They had very little money,” said the asylum seeker. Another smuggler was charging less said the asylum seeker. “But he forced them to cross when the weather was bad, in an overcrowded boat…”

Hostile rhetoric surrounding immigration has long been characterised by deliberately dehumanising images and terminology. Suspicion towards migrants is often infused with racism. Making it harder to claim asylum does nothing to prevent tragedies such as the drowning of babies.

There are over 30,000 Asian migrant workers across Portugal, according to estimates by civil rights organizations. The success of Portuguese agriculture in recent years has become its curse. As the country exports more and more berries and vegetables, the demand for cheap labour has soared. But Portuguese people no longer want to do this work.

Most of them are in the country semi-legally, still waiting for their Portuguese papers. They live in inhumane conditions, often working more than 10 hours a day and brutally exploited by dubious temporary employment agencies that place them on farms.

Some live in residential containers or crammed into derelict houses, forced to depend on mafia-like employment agencies. Officially, they work for the state-guaranteed minimum wage of around €600, but they have to pay their employer for accommodation, transportation to the workplace and even food. This often leaves them with only €10 or less per working day.

Cheap Asian workers flock to Portugal′s farms | Business| Economy and finance news from a German perspective | DW | 08.06.2021

 Papua New Guinea has vast natural resources, with gold, silver and copper mines dotted around the country, as well as large petroleum and liquefied natural gas reserves, but comparatively little of the wealth from these resources makes its way into government coffers or trickles down into communities.

 Australian mining companies have paid little or no corporate income tax in Papua New Guinea despite earning hundreds of millions of dollars from their PNG operations, benefiting from a complex taxation system that experts say leaves the country’s resources sector significantly “undertaxed”.

In the past decade Australian mining giants Newcrest and St Barbara, which have huge mines in PNG, have paid no corporate income tax some years, with the companies using generous tax rules and accounting practices to minimise their tax burdens.

In 2018, oil and mineral products made up almost 90% of the value of Papua New Guinea’s exports but less than 10% of government revenues. Oil and mineral products contributed an even smaller share of government revenues in previous years.

This is partly due to PNG’s taxation system, which uses an additional profits or “rent tax” method of taxation, which is complex, rather than a more straightforward flat royalty rate.

Australian companies own and operate many of the largest mines in Papua New Guinea, and 97% of PNG’s gold exports go to Australia, but the royalties, salary and other taxes levied in PNG can add up to just a fraction of either the revenue or operating profit.

St Barbara operates the Simberi mine, one of the largest gold mines in the world, in New Ireland province. The mine has generated AU$199m or more in revenues in each of the past four years but paid nothing in income taxes to the PNG government between 2012 and 30 June 2020. Between 1 July and 31 December 2020, St Barbara paid AU$7.7m gross in Papua New Guinea income tax. That mine booked gross profit greater than AU$75m in each of 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2017 financial years. In the 2016 financial year, St Barbara’s Simberi operations booked AU$170m in revenue and AU$50m in gross profit.

Newcrest Mining operates the Lihir goldmine on Aniolam Island in PNG. Newcrest did not pay corporate income tax in PNG in 2016 or 2017. In 2018 Newcrest booked more than US$1.2bn in revenue from the Lihir mine. Earnings before interest and taxes for Lihir were US$261m.

Diane Kraal, a senior lecturer at Monash University, was appointed by the PNG government to research petroleum and mining tax reform in the country in 2014. Kraal said PNG’s taxation system meant there was “no equity” for the Papua New Guinean people and had crippled the government’s ability to provide basic services to its people,

“Looking at the latest World Bank report in PNG, they confirm that the resource sector in PNG is undertaxed,” she said. “It’s undertaxed because of poor tax design and companies aren’t going to complain about that. In PNG they have persisted with a rent tax and it hasn’t worked because it’s too complex,” said Kraal. “These things can be manipulated…” The taxation system in PNG is a legacy from when PNG was an Australian colony and offered tax holidays and other exemptions to attract foreign investors, Kraal said. “There’s a presence of multinational companies in PNG, including Australian companies, and they’re hugely powerful,” she said. “When huge companies start lobbying, you’ve got to have a strong press, you’ve got to have a strong government … and they don’t have that in PNG at the moment… They’ve got Covid, they’ve got economic contraction and they’ve got political problems and that just gives power to vested interests.”

 Australian companies, she said were doing the “right thing” by shareholders in seeking to minimise their tax burden. “You can’t expect foreign companies to pay more tax than the legislation requires.”

Australian mining companies have paid little or no corporate income tax in PNG despite huge profits | Papua New Guinea | The Guardian