Time for Plan C: Big Corporations Should Pay Fair Share In "Fiscal Cliff" Deal Say Business Leaders

WASHINGTON - Several business organizations released a joint statement saying it’s “time for Plan C: big corporations now dodging billions in taxes should pay their fair share. Forget Plan B tax breaks for those making $999,999 a year [and] cuts to Social Security.” Instead, they call on Congress and the president to close corporate tax haven loopholes “costing the U.S. Treasury $100 billion a year and raise corporate tax revenues above today’s historically low levels. … In 1952, U.S corporate income taxes accounted for 32 percent of federal revenues; last year this number was less than 8 percent.”

JOSEPH MAGID, via Bob Keener [email]
Magid is president of Gryphon Systems, a management consulting company in Wynnewood, PA. He said today: “With corporate profits at a 50-year high and corporate taxes as a share of the economy at a 50-year low, now is not the time to lock in low corporate taxes. Our country can not afford to keep giving tax breaks and loopholes to giant corporations at the expense of smaller businesses. Highly profitable U.S. multinationals should pay their fair share.”

SCOTT KLINGER [email]
Klinger, tax policy director of Business for Shared Prosperity, said today: “Corporate tax dodging is undermining our economy. It’s time for Plan C: revenue-raising corporate tax reform that calls upon our largest corporations to pay their fair share and once again invest in America, which has invested so much in their success.”

LEW PRINCE [email]
Managing partner of Vintage Vinyl in St. Louis, the Midwest’s largest independent music store, Prince said today: “You can dress up your profits in Bermuda shorts. But that doesn’t mean they’re not earned in America. We can’t afford revenue neutral corporate tax reform. There’s nothing neutral about big business tax dodging — it’s unpatriotic, plain and simple.”

RESHONDA YOUNG, via Joshua Welter [email]

Young, operations manager of Alpha Express, Inc., a family business that provides local, regional and national delivery service, based in Waterloo, Iowa, said today: “We’re not afraid to compete with the biggest delivery companies out there, but it needs to be a fair fight, not one in which big corporations use loopholes to avoid their taxes, stick our business with the tab, and rob our nation of the resources we need for a healthy economy.”

ERIC HENRY, via Bob Keener [email]
President of TS Designs, a T-shirt manufacturer in Burlington, NC, Henry said today: “Small businesses like mine put our money back into our operations which keeps jobs, investment and tax dollars right here in our own communities. The corporate tax code should not give incentives to U.S. multinational corporations to hide their revenues offshore and avoid paying their fair share.”

Background: More than 600 business owners and executives, including those quoted above, signed a letter sent by the American Sustainable Business Council, Business for Shared Prosperity and the Main Street Alliance to Congress and the president, saying they “want a tax system that is fair and provides sufficient revenue for the public services and infrastructure that underpin our economy. When powerful, large U.S. corporations avoid their fair share of taxes, they undermine U.S. competitiveness, contribute to the national debt and shift more of the tax burden to domestic businesses, especially small businesses that create most of the new jobs.”