When one thinks about tax havens, tiny tropical islands and corrupt banana Republics comes to mind. Not so says the Tax Justice Network. Nope it's Delaware, the incorporation haven of the U.S.A.
According to the Delaware Secretary of State's office their operating budget was $12 million in 2007 and they made $24 million in the fees for expedited incorporation filings alone.
There are currently some 695,000 active entities registered in Delaware, including 50 percent of the corporations publically traded on the U.S. stock exchange.
New business formations in Delaware are currently running at about 130,000 per annum.
Score another one for lobbyists U.S. Chamber of Commerce, NASSCOM and Multinational corporations who are manipulating international and U.S. corporate tax codes. The Obama administration shelved corporate tax reform to remove the loopholes for the tax gains corporations get to offshore outsource your job.
The Obama administration has shelved the proposal in the face of intense pressure from business. A key part of the tax plan, and a key beef of industry, was a proposal to reform the part of the tax code that allows companies to defer paying taxes on profits earned from overseas investments.
Caught in a vise of shrinking revenue and stubbornly high public spending, the Caymans averted a fiscal crisis this week by securing a $60 million overseas loan.
But the Foreign and Commonwealth office in Britain, which oversees the Caymans and can veto foreign lending requests, has delivered an ultimatum: The rest of the $284 million the Cayman government says it needs will not be forthcoming until this offshore financial center imposes spending cuts and considers some form of direct taxation on businesses here and its 57,000 residents.
The chorus of naysayers to the Obama administration's response to our economic crisis must be raised to deafening levels. There is little time to waste, even if our government may already be bought and paid for by the financial elites. That does not mean that the citizens must go down quietly or meekly.
Earlier today, Robert Oak highlighted an effort to urge Obama to reconsider his policies with respect to the mega-bank bailouts. For me, one of the most important parts of this appeal is:
International Taxation: Large U.S. Corporations and Federal Contractors with Subsidiaries in Jurisdictions Listed as Tax Havens or Financial Privacy Jurisdictions, December 18, 2008
The Washington Post went further to see which of the TARP recipients also have offshore tax havens:
American International Group, Bank of America, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley are among the companies that are getting bailed out by U.S. taxpayers while having subsidiaries in locations where they can avoid paying U.S. taxes
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