New Report: Multinationals Dodging $718bn in U.S. Taxes on Profits Booked Offshore

The largest American companies have stashed nearly $2.5 trillion in profits offshore allowing them to dodge $718 billion in U.S. taxes, according to a new report released Tuesday by Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund--all members of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition (FACT Coalition).

Clark Gascoigne, the deputy director of the FACT Coalition, issued the following statement:

"There's been a lot of talk this week about how the tax system is rigged and this report is Exhibit A. Multinational corporations are now holding $2.5 trillion offshore. To put that in context, it is an amount larger than the GDP of France. By shifting their profits to tax havens, the largest U.S. companies have been able to avoid more than $700 billion in taxes. These loopholes simply aren't available to average taxpayers and small businesses, who can't afford to hire the lawyers and accountants to move money through shell companies created in tax havens."

"Unfortunately, a number of proposals we see from Congress seek to exacerbate the situation by moving us to a system that would permanently reward offshore tax avoidance. Instead, Congress should end the practice of deferring taxes on profits held offshore and remove the bizarre incentives for companies to 'invert.' If we are ever going to rationalize the corporate tax code, we must also boost transparency of these accounting maneuvers to better understand them. As a start, companies should be required to publicly disclose their revenues, profits and tax information on a country-by-country basis."

The FACT Coalition also filed a comment late Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cautioning the agency against proceeding with a rule to reduce disclosure to investors and urging the SEC to instead boost transparency through public country-by-country reporting.