In a bid to win public support for President Donald Trump’s tax cut proposal, lobbyists recently unveiled a website called Tax Reform for America, featuring tools for contacting legislators and testimonials of “fellow taxpayers” to explain why the legislation is necessary.
The promotional website prominently features Loretta Lepore, a small business owner from Atlanta, Georgia, as an ordinary American who would benefit from a tax cut.
“The tax system is so complex that it puts an undue burden on small businesses instead of allowing us to allocate resources back into our businesses and back into our people,” Lepore says in her testimonial. “Tax reform needs to be addressed, to be simplified for every American and every small business across the country.”
Testimonial from Tax Reform for America website.
The nature of Lepore’s small business, however, is never disclosed.
She runs a consultancy that serves big businesses. Lepore’s LLC is registered to lobby on behalf of one of the biggest expected winners of tax reform: Cisco Systems, the California-based technology conglomerate that’s poised to reap a windfall of billions of dollars from a reduction in the corporate tax rate.
In order to avoid paying U.S. federal taxes, Cisco has about $68 billion in earnings in overseas accounts. The company is expected to repatriate a large portion of those funds if corporate tax rates are dramatically lowered. The repatriation dynamic positions Cisco — along with Apple and Microsoft — as one of the companies that stands to gain the most from the tax plan proposed by Republicans.
If Cisco repatriates its overseas cash, don’t expect a sudden rush of investment into new jobs. Kelly Kramer, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Cisco, told a conference of financial analysts in June that the company expects to use the cash to reward investors. Kramer said she expects to use tax reform to “grow to our dividend” and become a “lot more aggressive on the buyback,” referring to efforts to provide a short-term boost to the company’s stock price by buying its own shares on the marketplace.
The Tax Reform for America site is part of a campaign managed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest private sector lobbying organization in the country. The Chamber claims it is the “voice for business,” representing “mom-and-pop shops.” But the business association is largely funded by a relatively small number of massive corporate interests, including Fortune 100 firms such as Microsoft and Dow Chemical.
Top photo: A general view of the Cisco booth at the 2014 International CES at the Las Vegas Convention Center on January 7, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
It is a false dichotomy, because taxes go back into the pockets of Big Business anyway. Whilst they can keep Joe Public paying the majority all the better, but whatever they put into the sytem they can suck back out again. All people ever talk about is getting Big Business to PAY, never the other way around.
If Big Business is not paying, everyone else should do likewise. I feel truly sorry for the Mr Average Corporation in America, they are funding everything: the insane military that will eventually enable all American jobs to go overseas; the Surveillance State that monitors their behaviour and steals their secrets all to empower their bigger rivals; they pay for all the subsidies and perks of their big rivals; they pay the salaries of the civil servant gatekeepers of the doors of power and who enable legislators to write laws injurous to them.
Too much taxation lies at the heart of America’s problems. Idle hands may make light work for the Devil, but so does an endless supply of free money and the unasailable right to spend it nefariously ad nauseum as one sees fit.
When the divide between government and big business is non-existent and theire is no meaningful money going out of that system to non-associated external parties, then big business tax evasion is meaningless. Money is here, money is there, but either way it is still their money getting spent on them.
But then that is so glaringly obvious one might suspect you have an agenda to fill.
Good job!
Considering for a moment that Donald Trump isn’t as stupid as he appears. What is the justification for his praising the police or the military in nearly every speech he gives? Even if it’s out of context is it because he’s some sort of super-patriot or more likely when the growing backlash of his assault on Americans’ values not to mention their economic well-being becomes a serious threat, like all dictators, he knows he will need both the support of police and the military.
Makes perfect sense.
So has his onslaught of decrying the media as FAKE, to protect his overweight self from revealing articles about his corrupt business practices and deals. When he is eventually (and finally) indicted by SC Mueller, he will retain the rabid support of his base.
He has been plotting this strategy the longest.
So is revenge. That is in his DNA.
Doesn’t take being smart, though. I predict that this is the only area you will detect patience.
I believe his justification in “Police murder POC, and the military murders POC, so I love them both! White power!”
Well