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Make Tax Dodgers Pay Up
When you pay your taxes, consider the wealthy and corporate tax dodgers.
If you paid more than $10 to the IRS, then you paid more than Verizon, Boeing, Bank of America, Citigroup and General Electric. And you probably paid a higher percentage of your income than the billionaires who appear on the pages of the Forbes 400.
Do you believe that before Congress makes deep budget cuts they should reverse huge tax breaks for millionaires and deadbeat corporations?
WASHINGTON
When you pay your taxes, consider the wealthy and corporate tax dodgers.
If you paid more than $10 to the IRS, then you paid more than Verizon, Boeing, Bank of America, Citigroup and General Electric. And you probably paid a higher percentage of your income than the billionaires who appear on the pages of the Forbes 400.
Do you believe that before Congress makes deep budget cuts they should reverse huge tax breaks for millionaires and deadbeat corporations?
Join a national movement this week...You can start by supporting the Fairness in Taxation Act, which would add tax brackets for millionaire income earners and generate $78 billion a year. You can also support the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act (sponsored by Sen. Levin/Rep. Doggett) closing accountant tax dodges by profitable corporations - and generate $100 billion a year.
CLICK TO CALL:
Calling is better than email! Use our nifty calling technology that includes a set of talking points. Tell your Congressional members you don't want to see any budget cuts until billionaires and U.S. multinational companies pay their fair share. Ask them to cosponsor our two legislative proposals, the Fairness in Taxation Act and the Stop Tax Havens Abuse Act.
WRITE A LETTER TO EDITOR:
Use our handy letter to the editor device to submit a letter about budget cuts and corporate tax havens. We've included a draft letter that you can personalize.
GOT MORE THAN 5 MINUTES?
You can join or organize a US Uncut Tax Day Action.There are already more than 80 local actions planned between April 15 and April 18. See the list of organized events. If there isn't one in your town or neighborhood, organize one!
LEARN MORE:
- Read our report, Unnecessary Austerity, produced with the Institute for Policy Studies. The report looks at tax shifts over the last 50 years and identifies $400 billion in new revenue proposals.
- Check out our talking pointson corporate tax dodging.
- See what our partner organizations are doing: Visit Citizens for Tax Justice and US UNCUT.
- Take a look at a special issue of Bloomberg Business Week, "How To Pay No Taxes."
- Learn about Wealth for the Common Good, a group of high income and wealthy individuals who advocate for higher taxes...on themselves.
- Do you have investments? Are you a business owner? Join others who believe tax havens create an unfair advantage for tax dodgers, Business & Investors Against Tax Haven Abuse.
Institute for Policy Studies turns Ideas into Action for Peace, Justice and the Environment. We strengthen social movements with independent research, visionary thinking, and links to the grassroots, scholars and elected officials. I.F. Stone once called IPS "the think tank for the rest of us." Since 1963, we have empowered people to build healthy and democratic societies in communities, the US, and the world. Click here to learn more, or read the latest below.
LATEST NEWS
Social Democracies Keep Top Spots on World Happiness Report as US Falls to Record Low
In the U.S., "the downward trend in life satisfaction is particularly steep among young people under 30, especially women."
Mar 21, 2025
For the eighth consecutive year, the World Happiness Report on Thursday found that the countries with the happiest people are those that use their resources to invest in social welfare—and documented a precipitous drop in satisfaction among people in the United States, where President Donald Trump is pushing to destroy public services in the interest of further enriching the country's wealthiest people and corporations.
The top four happiest countries in the world were the same this year as in 2024, with Finland taking the top spot followed by Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden.
The report, compiled by the Wellbeing Research Center at University of Oxford along with Gallup and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, found that the U.S. is continuing to fall down the list—ranking at 24, one spot lower than in 2024. In 2012, when the World Happiness Report was first published, the U.S. held the 11th spot.
The researchers measured several variables that contribute to people's happiness, including social supports, freedom to make life choices, and perceptions of corruption within their country.
Across the world, researchers recorded a drop in "deaths of despair"—preventable deaths from substance use disorders, alcohol abuse, and suicide. But the U.S. was one of two countries—the other being South Korea—where these deaths "rapidly rose," with an average yearly increase of 1.3 deaths per 100,000.
This year's World Happiness Report focuses largely on "the impact of caring and sharing" on people's happiness, noting that the prevalence of volunteering and helping strangers was high in some of the happiest countries, while social isolation in the U.S. was tied to high levels of unhappiness.
"In the United States, using data from the American Time Use Survey, the authors find clear evidence that Americans are spending more and more time dining alone," reads the report's executive summary. "In 2023, roughly 1 in 4 Americans reported eating all of their meals alone the previous day—an increase of 53% since 2003."
But the Costa Rican ambassador to the U.S., Catalina Crespo Sancho, noted at an event hosted by Semafor presenting the annual report, that the way the Costa Rican government invests public funds has helped push it into the top 10 happiest countries for the first time, with Costa Rica ranking sixth in the world.
"We're one of the few countries in the world that does not have an army," said Crespo Sancho. "All that money, they invested in things that our Nordic countries here have been doing for many, many years... Education, social services, health access."
Residents of the happiest countries named in the report benefit from significant public investment in healthcare, education, childcare, and other public services, and live in societies where the divide between the richest households and working people is far smaller than in the United States.
Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, and the Netherlands all score below 30 on the World Bank's Gini Index, which measures income inequality, while the U.S. has a score of 41.3, indicating a wider gap between the rich and poor.
The report was released two months into Trump's second term in the White House, which has already been characterized by efforts by Trump and his billionaire ally, tech mogul Elon Musk, to gut public spending on healthcare, education, and the environment in order to fund tax cuts for the richest households. The Republican Party is also aggressively pushing attacks on bodily autonomy in the U.S., passing abortion bans and so-called "fetal personhood" measures as well as laws barring transgender and gender nonconforming people from accessing affirming healthcare.
According to the report, in the U.S., "the downward trend in life satisfaction is particularly steep among young people under 30, especially women."
The report also contextualized the victory of Trump and rise of far-right movements like the president's nationalist, anti-immigration MAGA movement, noting that far-right supporters of "anti-system" political leaders like Trump "have a very low level of social trust."
For the populist right, this low trust is not limited to strangers, but also extends to others in general, from homosexuals to their own neighbors. The xenophobic inclination of the populist right, well-documented worldwide, seems to be a particular case of a broader distrust towards the rest of society. Right-wing populists throughout the world share xenophobic and anti-immigration inclinations. The Sweden Democrats, the Danish People's Party, the Finns Party, the Freedom Party of Austria, Greece's Golden Dawn, the Northern League and Fratelli in Italy, the National Rally in France, and a fraction of the Republican Party in the U.S. are all built on strong anti-immigration foundations.
Meanwhile, "far-left voters have a higher level of social trust," leading them to support "pro-redistribution, pro-immigrant" political groups that offer an alternative to the political establishment with "more universalist values."
In the United States' two-party system, citizens "with low life satisfaction and low social trust" tend to "abstain" from political engagement, according to the report.
"The fall in life satisfaction cannot be explained by economic growth," reads the report. "Rather, it could be blamed on the feelings of financial insecurity and loneliness experienced by Americans and Europeans—two symptoms of a damaged social fabric. It is driven by almost all social categories, but in particular, by the rural, the less-educated, and, quite strikingly, by the younger generation. This low level of life satisfaction is a breeding ground for populism and the lack of social trust is behind the political success of the far right."
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AOC, Sanders Rallying 15,000 Arizonans—With Thousands More Watching Online—Makes Clear 'The Moment We're In'
"People are starting to put the pieces together, and ironically the most divisive forces in this country are actually starting to bring more of us together," said Ocasio-Cortez.
Mar 21, 2025
A stop on Sen. Bernie Sanders' nationwide town hall tour "Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here" in Tempe, Arizona that also featured Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York on Thursday broke the record for the number of attendees at an event hosted by Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, in the state, according to his director of communications.
"This is a big deal," wrote communications director Anna Bahr on X of the gangbusters turnout.
"Just to be clear about the moment we're in: Bernie Sanders' biggest crowd in Phoenix previously was 11,300 in 2015 when he was running for president. Tonight, in a non-campaign year, when he is running for nothing, 15,000 Arizonans turned out," she wrote. Bahr also said that more than 123,000 people watched the livestream of the event online.
Footage of the event shows a completely packed event space at Arizona State University's Mullet Arena. At least a 1,000 people could not enter the arena because there was no room inside, according to the Arizona Mirror.
Sanders launched his "Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here" tour, which focuses on working-class districts that President Joe Biden won in 2020 but were won by a House Republican in 2024, in February, with the aim of talking to Americans about the "takeover of the national government by billionaires and large corporations, and the country's move toward authoritarianism."
In their remarks on Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders spoke about Republican efforts to target programs like Social Security and Medicaid and billionaire Elon Musk's influence over the GOP.
"The billionaires who are taking a wrecking ball to our country," said Ocasio-Cortez—alluding to Musk's efforts to slash federal spending and personnel with the Department of Government Efficiency, and other billionaires in U.S. President Trump's orbit—"derive their power from dividing working people apart."
"People are starting to put the pieces together, and ironically the most divisive forces in this country are actually starting to bring more of us together," said Ocasio-Cortez.
"Their disdain for working people," she continued, "is a shorthand for the right's entire political agenda and a certain kind of ugly politics in this country—and that is lying to and screwing over working at middle class Americans so that they can steal our healthcare, Social Security, and veterans benefits."
When Sanders took the stage, he said, "Trump and his billionaire friends have never, ever had it so good in the history of this country."
Sanders also argued that if a Republican voiced opposition to Republicans' plan to deliver tax cuts that will primarily benefit the wealthy, "Musk in five minutes would say, 'we are going to primary you'... That is not a democracy."
Musk—who donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump and other GOP candidates in 2024—has threatened to fund moderate candidates in heavily Democratic districts.
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'Delusional' Trump Threatens to Send Tesla Vandals to Prison for 20 Years... in El Salvador
"If genuine steps are taken to remove U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to prisons in El Salvador," said one legal expert, "this removal would violate not only U.S. law but the U.S. Constitution."
Mar 21, 2025
President Donald Trump on Friday morning said anyone caught vandalizing Tesla cars or dealerships would be sent to the notoriously violent prisons of El Salvador for a 20-year sentence, a threat characterized by critics as "delusional" as well as overtly unlawful.
"People that get caught sabotaging Teslas will stand a very good chance of going to jail for up to twenty years, and that includes the funders," Trump stated overnight, adding in all caps: "WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU!!!"
Several hours later, Trump took up the issue again on his TruthSocial platform, saying: "I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20-year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla. Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!"
"The migrant detentions there are the dry run. He wants to ship U.S. prisoners to El Salvador. We cannot sleepwalk through this."
Civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill said the threat, which follows on Trump's highly controversial deportation of alleged gang members to El Salvador last week, should not be taken lightly.
"Remember that this is where his discussions with El Salvador began," said Ifill in response to Trump's rantings on Friday. "The migrant detentions there are the dry run. He wants to ship U.S. prisoners to El Salvador. We cannot sleepwalk through this."
The #TeslaTakedown movement has gained steam over recent weeks, with people nationwide angered by Elon Musk's wholesale assault on cherished government agencies and programs. The world's richest man, Musk, has been empowered by Trump to spearhead his invented Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
As Axios reports, in response to the popular anger directed at Tesla, "Trump has put the full weight of the U.S. government behind defending and promoting 'first buddy' Elon Musk's car company, which has seen both its sales and stock price slump."
On Thursday, Attorney General Pam Bondi touted the arrests of three people for alleged acts of vandalism against Tesla, saying, "Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars."
Sending U.S. citizens to a foreign country for imprisonment—even if duly convicted of a crime—is not just insane but would be grossly unconstitutional, as Lauren-Brooke Eisen, a former prosecutor and currently the senior director of the Brennan Center's Justice Program, recently explained.
"It is illegal to expatriate U.S. citizens for a crime," Eisen wrote earlier this month in response to previous threats from the Trump administration to deport people to El Salvador for alleged crimes committed in the United States. "There is no modern precedent for sending U.S. citizens who are convicted of crimes to other countries for punishment, or 'banishment' as it has been formerly called and practiced."
Eisen concluded that it remained "unclear whether the Trump administration is still researching the 'legality' of this proposal or thinking through this scenario with any seriousness. But if genuine steps are taken to remove U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to prisons in El Salvador, this removal would violate not only U.S. law but the U.S. Constitution."
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