Corporations Post Record Profits As Republicans Call For Eliminating The ‘Insidious’ Corporate

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Corporations Post Record Profits As Republicans Call For Eliminating The ‘Insidious’ Corporate Income Tax

Last week, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) – a man ThinkProgress readers are familiar with – took to the House floor to bemoan the “insidious” tax on corporations. “We can compete with anybody,” Gohmert declared, “if you take off that insidious tax” on business. Watch it:

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/11/23/corp-record-profits/

Gohmert’s defense of corporations are not the words of a single rogue congressman. Rather, sticking up for the big guy is an orthodoxy that pervades the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Newly-elected Gov. Scott Walker (R) of Wisconsin has pledged to repeal the state’s corporate income tax. Sen.-elect Marco Rubio (R-FL) wants to slash the federal corporate income tax. And Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) proposes completely eliminating the tax in his radical Roadmap for America.

Conservatives’ attempts to portray corporations as victims in this economy is dubious for two reasons. First, despite right-wing misinformation, American corporations actually already pay far less in taxes than those in other industrialized nations:





In fact, because of tax havens and other loopholes, many mega-corporations actually pay little to no taxes. The most recent high-profile example is Google, which has used income shifting and other tactics to reduce its effective tax rate to 2.4 percent. General Electric went a step even further. The company not only avoided all corporate income taxes last year, but actually recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.

Secondly, despite the myths that corporate taxes are “strangling” business, and that President Obama is “anti-business,” a report released today from the Commerce Department shows that American companies actually brought in record profits during the last quarter. With an annual profit rate of $1.66 trillion, the third quarter of this year produced “the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago.”

Still record profits are likely not enough to convince conservatives that corporations have it just fine in the U.S.. Even apologizing to mega-corporations that just dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico isn’t enough. Right-wingers like Gohmert and Ryan will not be satisfied until we give tax-free status to all corporations.

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1. When you consider that

perception is projection, the idea of "welfare Queens" stands out. From the Reagan dayz, we have heard about those awful abuses of the welfare system that were passed around as deflective meme. That kind of infective and defective propagandist rhetoric allowed those who "work hard and pay taxes" to focus their vitriol and dismay on the poor so that they would not be looking at the people who were going to parasitically and systematically such them dry from the top echelons ownership.

Now, we see the blatant and decadent disrobing of the corporate welfare system where what the poor get and do is not even a practical ruse. The owners stand behind corporate share-holding as if they are merely participants in this new welfare system for the deadbeat rich. However, they are the Maestros running the Fascist concert that is going for the big finale where the growing underclass walk a trail of tears and desperation that leads to prison labor, at best.

So, the expectation is that we cut the owner's corps bigger welfare checks while thinking that, due to the fact that an impoverished adult might get SNAP, (if anything)that welfare had been reformed. Oh, he has been reformed, in the sense that it is now goes right to the top while the growing masses who have unwittingly immigrated to the United States of Destitution crawl and scrounge for nothing more than survival in the midst of plenty.

Be seeing you there when the Class War is officially, (or, more likely unofficially) over. Not much longer to go. Meanwhile, pay those taxes because no billionaire should be left behind.