Corporate Income Tax and the Public's Need to Know (from ReclaimDemocracy)

[marmar]

Corporate Income Tax and the Public's Need to Know


Print-friendly Page By Jim Elliot
Published February, 2007



In 2003, 40% of the top 500 national and multinational companies doing business in Montana paid less income tax than 50% of Montana wage earners—$500. When I discovered that, I wanted to know why, and so I launched a quest to make the state income tax records of these mega-corporations public knowledge.

Ever since the Corporate Income Tax was introduced in 1909 by President William Howard Taft there has been controversy about whether or not this information should be a matter of public record. Taft, a Republican, didn't think there should be any controversy at all; he specified in his address to Congress that public knowledge of corporate earnings and taxes would serve as a check on the fast and loose methods corporations were using at the turn of the 20th Century.

Taft followed his good friend Teddy Roosevelt as President, and it was Roosevelt who led the charge against the corporate “Trusts” which colluded to control their respective industries of coal, railroads, steel, and meat-packing.

So when the Corporate Income Tax was established the earnings and taxes of the big corporations was public knowledge. It didn't last long. Corporations were then, as now, far more powerful than mere Presidents, and the Congress soon removed the publicity provisions.

From time to time in the wake of the discovery of widespread corporate fraud activities, most recently with Enron and other companies, there have been attempts at reviving the publicity provisions. But corporations are still the most powerful political force in the world, and the attempts have fizzled at the national level. There are a few states that have some measure of corporate disclosure, and I believe Montana should join them. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/mt/tax_disclosure.php

[EVDebs]

1. Warren Buffett Urges Higher Corporate Taxes

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0306-01.htm

""Corporate income taxes in fiscal 2003 accounted for 7.4% of all federal tax receipts, down from a post-war peak of 32% in 1952. With one exception (1983), last year’s percentage is the lowest recorded since data was first published in 1934. Even so, tax breaks for corporations (and their investors, particularly large ones) were a major part of the Administration’s 2002 and 2003 initiatives. If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning.""

[marmar]

3. Thanks for the link.

:thumbsup:

[Hangingon]

2. I think corporate income taxes should be available..

after a reasonable period of time. That time might be 50 years. Income tax returns contain proprietary information that if made public could unfairly hurt a company. I think that corporate tax returns should be open within 5 years after a bankruptcy dissolution.