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Close Corporate Tax Loopholes

PERVASIVE TAX AVOIDANCE—Across the country, some of the nation’s best-known companies — including GE, Google and Goldman Sachs — have avoided paying the taxes they owe, costing Arizonans $2.2 billion last year.

LOOPHOLES COST ARIZONANS $2.2 BILLION

No company should be able to game the tax system to avoid paying what it legitimately owes. And, yet, establishing shell companies in offshore havens for the purpose of tax avoidance is becoming more the rule than the exception for at least 83 of the nation's top 100 publicly traded companies. GE, Google, Goldman Sachs and dozens of others have created hundreds of phantom entities with nothing more than a clever tax attorney and P.O. box.

The official estimate of how much Americans lose in tax revenue is $150 billion per year. That's money that is shouldered by average taxpayers, either through additional taxes today or additional debt to be paid by the next generation.

It’s not illegal, but it’s not right.

The result? The average taxpayer paid $803 more this year to cover the $150 billion that G.E. and others that use offshore tax havens skipped out on. And small businesses and companies that don’t use these schemes have to struggle to compete with those that do.

Meanwhile, the Arizona Legislature and Congress are considering deep cuts for essential public programs — from education, to health care, to clean air and drinking water. They’re asking us to tighten our belts and make sacrifices, while giving the tax haven crew a free ride.

We are pushing for commonsense changes that simply say if corporations are based here and generate profits here, then they should, like all of us who earn income in here, pay the taxes they owe.

Issue updates

News Release | Arizona PIRG Education Fund | Tax

Report Exposes How Taxpayers Bear Cost of Corporate Settlements

A new report spotlights a common practice where corporations that commit wrongdoing and agree to financial settlements with the federal government can claim such settlement payments as tax-deductible business expenses.

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Report | Arizona PIRG Education Fund | Tax

Subsidizing Bad Behavior

Corporations accused of wrongdoing commonly settle legal disputes with government regulators out of court. Doing so allows both the company and the government to avoid going to trial and the agency gets to appear as if it is teaching the company a lesson for its misdeeds. However, very often the corporations deduct the costs of the settlement on their taxes as an ordinary business expense, shifting a significant portion of the burden onto ordinary taxpayers to pick up the tab.

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News Release | Arizona PIRG Education Fund | Tax

This Time, Taxpayers Shoulder None of $4.5 Billion BP Settlement Deal

In great news for taxpayers, unlike earlier settlements from the Gulf Oil spill, the settlement the U.S. Justice Department negotiated with BP stipulated that none of the penalties paid are tax-deductible.

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News Release | Arizona PIRG | Tax

U.S. Senate Finance Votes to Extend Expensive Offshore Tax Loopholes

With only one day’s notice to the public, the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance approved a package of tax “extenders” that included two provisions that will force taxpayers to pick up a $12.7 billion tab over the next two years by reinstating expired loopholes and tax preferences that allow some multinational companies to shift income offshore and avoid U.S. taxes.

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News Release | Arizona PIRG | Tax

U.S. SENATE VOTE ON FARM BILL A DISAPPOINTMENT; TAXPAYER DOLLARS STILL GOING TO BIG AG

The Arizona Public Interest Research Group (Arizona PIRG) is disappointed in the Senate’s approval of the 2012 Farm Bill, which will send tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to Big Ag. The Senate missed a golden opportunity to tackle the problem of wasteful agricultural subsidies, which have cost taxpayers $260 billion since 1995.  Instead, this bill recommits to taxpayer support for the largest agribusinesses.

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News Release | Arizona PIRG | Tax

U.S. SENATE VOTE ON FARM BILL A DISAPPOINTMENT; TAXPAYER DOLLARS STILL GOING TO BIG AG

The Arizona Public Interest Research Group (Arizona PIRG) is disappointed in the Senate’s approval of the 2012 Farm Bill, which will send tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to Big Ag. The Senate missed a golden opportunity to tackle the problem of wasteful agricultural subsidies, which have cost taxpayers $260 billion since 1995.  Instead, this bill recommits to taxpayer support for the largest agribusinesses.

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News Release | Arizona PIRG | Tax

Flawed Farm Bill Heads Towards U.S. Senate Floor

The U.S. Senate is moving to vote on the farm bill, S.3240 that would continue the current system of agricultural subsidies to large, profitable, agribusiness. If passed as is, taxpayers’ hard earned dollars will be handed out needlessly in the billions. And subsidies will continue for corn and soy, which is then processed into junk food ingredients, like high fructose corn syrup, accelerating the obesity epidemic in America.

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News Release | Arizona PIRG | Tax

U.S. SENATE COMMITTEE APPROVES NEW TAXPAYER GIVEAWAYS TO BIG AG

This year’s Farm Bill is a golden opportunity to end these wasteful subsidies and get our food policy right.  Unfortunately, while the legislation approved by the Senate Agriculture Committee does make a few positive steps, like ending the egregious Direct Payments program, it would further entrench the equally wasteful crop insurance program, which has cost taxpayers $30 billion over the last decade. And it would create a costly new subsidy scheme that would lock in currently-high corn and soy prices and once again direct billions of taxpayer dollars to giant agribusinesses.

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News Release | Arizona PIRG | Tax

Offshore Tax Havens Cost Average Arizona Taxpayer $297 a Year, Average Arizona Small Business $1,525

With tax day approaching, a new study released by the Arizona Public Interest Research Group (Arizona PIRG) found that the average Arizona taxpayer in 2011 would have to shoulder an extra $297 tax burden make up for revenue lost from corporations and wealthy individuals shifting income to offshore tax havens.

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News Release | Arizona PIRG | Tax

Amendment Passes to Crack Down on Offshore Tax Cheats

Statement of Serena Unrein, Public Interest Advocate for Arizona PIRG, on the passage of the Senate Amendment 1818, introduced by Senators Levin, Conrad, and Whitehouse to the Transportation Bill.

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Report | Arizona PIRG | Budget, Tax

Toward Common Ground for the Supercommittee

The National Taxpayers Union (NTU) and the Arizona Public Interest Research Group (Arizona PIRG) have joined together to propose to the Supercommittee and to Congress as a whole a list of more than 50 recommendations to reform our future spending commitments. If enacted in their entirety, these changes would save taxpayers more than $1 trillion over the coming decade.

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Report | Arizona PIRG Education Fund | Tax

Tax Shell Game 2011

Tax havens are countries with minimal or no taxes, to which U.S.-based multinational firms or individuals transfer their earnings to avoid paying taxes in the United States. Users of tax havens benefit from access to America’s markets, workforce, infrastructure and security, but pay little or nothing for it—violating the basic fairness of the tax system. Abuse of tax havens inflicts a price on other American taxpayers, who must pay higher taxes—now or in the future—to cover the government’s revenue shortfall, or must deal with cuts in government services.

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Report | Arizona PIRG | Tax

Toward Common Ground for the Fiscal Commission

Arizona PIRG and the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) have joined together to propose a list of 30 specific recommendations to reform our future spending commitments. If enacted in their entirety, these changes would save taxpayers over $600 billion in total by 2015, the target date for the Fiscal Commission to reduce our publicly-held debt-to-GDP ratio to a more sustainable level of 60 percent.

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Report | Arizona PIRG Education Fund | Tax

Tax Shell Game 2010

The IRS estimates that individuals and corporations currently hold $5 trillion in tax haven countries and asserts that the United States is responsible for a large portion of these assets.  Many corporations operating in the United States funnel money through offshore tax havens in order to avoid paying billions in U.S. taxes. In fact, an independent study found that nearly two-thirds of corporations pay no taxes at all.

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Priority Action

The CUT Loopholes Act would put an end to the price and profit shifting that allows publicly traded companies to engage in pervasive tax avoidance.

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