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tax havens
Trump and Musk Are Making It Harder for the IRS to Catch Wealthy Tax Cheats
Musk and Trump claim to be sage businessmen, but it would be hard to find a business owner in America that would dismantle their accounts receivable department when their wealthiest clients still owe them money.
Mar 29, 2025
The Trump administration and Elon Musk’s DOGE have begun dismantling the Internal Revenue Service, or IRS, beginning with 6,700 layoffs. Their stated plan is to cut half of the agency’s workforce.
Their biggest cuts appear to be in the Large Business and International division, which audits wealthy individuals and companies with more than $10 million in assets. These are essentially the workers that make sure billionaires and corporations pay their taxes.
Musk and President Donald Trump claim to be sage businessmen, but it would be hard to find a business owner in America that would dismantle their accounts receivable department when their wealthiest clients still owe them money.
The real beneficiaries of a weak IRS are billionaires and large global corporations.
So make no mistake: These cuts will cost taxpayers a lot more than they save.
Gutting the IRS will hurt the middle class by reducing the taxes billionaires and corporations pay for our public services. It passes the bill to working class taxpayers to cover veteran’s services, infrastructure, national parks, and defense.
When it comes to taxes, the wealthy aren’t like you or me. Most wage earners have our state and federal taxes withheld from our monthly paychecks. Ninety percent of taxpayers use the simple standard deduction filing and hope we get a refund.
But billionaires and multimillionaires are different. Their income comes mostly from investments and assets—which they can hide. They hire experts from the “wealth defense industry”—an armada of tax lawyers, accountants, and wealth managers—to minimize their taxes and maximize inheritances for their fortunate children.
They deploy anonymous shell companies, complex trusts, and bank accounts in tax havens like Bermuda, Cayman Islands, and South Dakota to aid their clients in minimizing taxes—tools not available to ordinary taxpayers. According to the Tax Justice Network, over $21 trillion is now hidden in tax havens like these.
A 2021 exposé by ProPublica found that more than half of the 100 wealthiest U.S. billionaires use a complex trust system to avoid estate taxes, which at the current level only kicks in for people with wealth over $13.99 million.
This aggressive tax dodging by the superrich has resulted in an enormous “tax gap” between what they owe and what’s collected. For the last few years, this gap is estimated at $700 billion a year—almost the size of the Pentagon budget.
Working and middle class taxpayers will pick up the slack, or see their services cut. Most likely some of this gap will be added to the $36 trillion national debt, requiring us to pay on an installment plan.
In previous decades, the IRS had the expertise to keep up with the schemes that billionaires and transnational corporations use to dodge their taxes. But over the last two decades, their capacity to catch wealthy crooks and grifters has been decimated by cuts.
Things started to turn around again in 2021, when Congress voted to invest in enforcement. And already, the investment was starting to pay off. A year ago, the IRS announced they’d recovered $482 million from millionaires who hadn’t paid their debts.
Trump and Musk are now reversing these modest gains.
As the agency people love to hate, the IRS was an easy target for Trump’s anti-government attacks. But the real beneficiaries of a weak IRS are billionaires and large global corporations. With an understaffed IRS, their tax shell games can operate without scrutiny—something seven previous IRS commissioners from both parties recently spoke out against.
We may not agree about everything in the federal budget, but most people agree the wealthy should pay their fair share of whatever expenses we share. And it’s hard to catch the criminals if you remove all the cops on the beat.
The billionaires will be popping their champagne bottles. Even with the higher tariffs on European bubbly, they can afford the best.
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‘Long-Overdue Justice’: EU Court Rules Ireland Let Apple Avoid $14.4 Billion in Taxes
"This ruling exposes E.U. tax havens' love affair with multinationals."
Sep 10, 2024
The European Union's highest court on Tuesday ruled that Apple must pay €13 billion in back taxes to Ireland, determining that the country gave the company illegal tax benefits in the past, in what campaigners called a victory for tax justice.
The E.U. Court of Justice ruling brought to a close a landmark case that began in 2016 when the European Commission ordered Apple to pay the €13 billion ($14.4 billion) based on an unfair tax arrangement the company had with Ireland from 1991 until 2014. A lower court overturned the commission's order in 2020, but Tuesday's ruling, which is final, restores it.
Observers viewed the case as among the most important brought by E.U. Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, an antitrust official who's been in office since 2014.
"It's important to show European taxpayers that once in a while, tax justice can be done," Vestager, who leaves office in two weeks, said following Tuesday's ruling.
Chiara Putaturo, a tax policy adviser at Oxfam EU, said in a statement that "this ruling exposes E.U. tax havens' love affair with multinationals. It delivers long-overdue justice after over a decade of Ireland standing by and allowing Apple to dodge taxes."
Today is a huge win for European citizens and tax justice.
👉In its final judgment, @EUCourtPress confirms @EU_Commission 2016 decision: Ireland granted illegal aid to @Apple.
Ireland now has to release up to 13 billion euros of unpaid taxes.
— Margrethe Vestager (@vestager) September 10, 2024
The European Commission argued that the selective tax benefits that Ireland had offered to two Apple subsidiaries amounted to illegal state aid that hindered competition. The company's tax burden in Ireland, where its European operations have been based since 1980, was as low as 0.005% of its profits in 2014.
In November of last year, Giovanni Pitruzzella, the advocate general of the E.U. Court of Justice, issued an opinion in favor of the commission's position and against the lower court ruling, in a setback for the tech giant. The high court, which is based in Luxembourg, generally agrees with its advocate general following such recommendations, as it ultimately did on Tuesday.
The €13 billion, plus interest, has been held in an escrow account since 2018 and will be released to Ireland, even though the country fought against the commission's order. Ireland said it would respect the court ruling.
Ireland is often characterized a tax haven within the E.U. and hosts the European headquarters for many multinational firms, with critics charging that its tax system drives up inequality.
Tax justice campaigners said Tuesday's ruling should just be a start and that more fundamental reforms are needed at the international and E.U. level.
"Our tax problem is more than just one rotten apple," Tove Maria Ryding, a policy manager at the European Network on Debt and Development, said in a statement.
"The international system for taxing multinational corporations continues to be deeply complex, unpredictable and unfair," she added, arguing that a company's economic activity across many countries, including in the Global South, shouldn't mean tax revenues only for one country such as Ireland.
Ryding praised the United Nations' efforts to establish a global tax convention, calling the proposal a "beacon of hope for a fairer future."
Putaturo of Oxfam likewise called for a fairer tax system in Europe.
"While this ruling will force the tech giant to pay its debt, the root of the issue is far from solved," she said. "E.U. tax havens can still make sweetheart tax deals with big multinationals. The duty to stop this rests on the shoulders of E.U. policymakers. Yet, they have turned a blind eye to tax havens within their borders and the harmful race to the bottom that countries like Ireland are instigating."
Oxfam EU also called for the closing of tax loopholes and the establishment of a wealth tax.
The Apple case was not the only victory for Vestager, the antitrust chief, on Tuesday: The E.U. Court of Justice also ruled that Google had illegally used its search engine dominance to favor its own shopping service, fining the company €2.4 billion ($2.65 billion).
Bloomberg on Tuesday called it a "double boost to the European Union’s crackdown on Big Tech," and said that Vestager's past work had "paved the way" for the U.S. and the U.K. to take action against Google.
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Sanders, Schakowsky Introduce Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act
"American workers should not be paying more in federal income taxes, in a given year, than profitable companies like Target, Amazon, and T-Mobile," said the senator.
Apr 10, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky on Wednesday introduced a bill that aims to close tax loopholes for corporations, end tax breaks for businesses that move jobs abroad, and stop companies from hiding profits in tax havens.
"At a time of massive wealth and income inequality and soaring corporate profits, it is an outrage that many large, profitable corporations continue to pay little to nothing in federal income taxes," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. "As working people struggle to pay rent and put food on the table, we have a corrupt and rigged tax code that is designed to benefit the wealthy and the powerful at the expense of working families."
"Meanwhile, Republicans would make a bad situation even worse by providing even more tax breaks to their corporate campaign contributors and the billionaire class while proposing massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid," he noted, nodding to GOP budget plans for fiscal year 2025, which begins in October.
"That is unacceptable. We need to create an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just the top 1%," Sanders asserted. "And, one of the ways we can begin to do that is by making sure that large corporations pay their fair share of taxes. American workers should not be paying more in federal income taxes, in a given year, than profitable companies like Target, Amazon, and T-Mobile."
"We need to create an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just the top 1%."
The Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act, unveiled as Americans prepare for the federal income tax deadline on Monday, could raise over $1 trillion in revenue over a decade with the tax haven provision alone, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
"Thanks to President Joe Biden, we are growing the economy from the bottom up and the middle out, but we must go even further by passing the Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act to help put the interests of everyday Americans ahead of billionaires and transnational corporations," said Schakowsky. "I thank Sen. Sanders for devoting his career to tackling income inequality and am proud to partner with him on this important measure."
Biden's budget blueprint for the next fiscal year, released last month, includes proposals to hike taxes for corporations and ultrarich individuals—whose wealth is soaring to record heights. Such policies are not expected to pass the divided Congress, but they serve as a clear statement of the Democratic president's position just months away from the November election.
When then-President Donald Trump—now the presumptive Republican nominee to face Biden—signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December 2017, he infamously declared that "corporations are literally going wild over this, I think even beyond my expectations."
Many of that law's cuts are set to expire at the end of next year. During an exclusive Florida fundraiser at the home of a billionaire investor over the weekend, the former president urged his supporters to help him "turn our country around" by taking steps including "extending the Trump tax cuts."
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OECD Pushed Australia to Drop Plan Aimed at Showing Where Corporations Pay Taxes
"What little credibility the OECD had is now in tatters," said one campaigner. "The OECD makes promises about ending global tax abuse but was evidently doing everything it could behind closed doors to protect tax abusers."
Jul 08, 2023
The Financial Times confirmed Friday that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development lobbied Australia to weaken a law that would have compelled about 2,500 highly profitable multinational corporations to reveal where they pay taxes, eliciting outrage from tax justice advocates.
Citing two unnamed people familiar with the discussions, FT reported that the Paris-based club of wealthy nations "pressured Australia's ruling Labor government to drop a crucial part of a new finance bill that would have required some multinationals to publicly disclose their country-by-country tax bills."
"This shows the true colors of the OECD."
According to the newspaper, "The OECD, which has driven efforts to force the world's largest companies to pay their fair share of tax, believed the bill would have undermined its own efforts to make multinationals' affairs less opaque."
Campaigners were incredulous given that the legislation the OECD enfeebled "would have delivered the biggest transparency breakthrough to date on the taxes of multinational corporations," as the Tax Justice Network put it.
The advocacy group estimates that multinationals shift more than $1.1 trillion of profit into tax havens annually, costing the world $312 billion per year in foregone corporate tax revenue. It also calculates that at least 1 of every 4 of those lost tax dollars could be saved if corporations were required to publish country-by-country reporting data.
"The OECD yet again doing the bidding for big business, the only winners here," tweeted Nabil Ahmed, economic justice director at Oxfam America.
Ahmed's observation was shared by Isabel Ortiz, the former director of social protection at the United Nations' International Labor Organization, who said, "This shows the true colors of the OECD and who [it is] serving."
Australia's original proposal "would have exposed unprecedented details about companies' tax affairs in each country they operate," FT reported, aiding efforts to crack down on tax evasion by forcing an estimated 21% of the world's multinational corporations—including many of the biggest firms in history—to come clean about "how much of their revenues are booked in low-tax jurisdictions."
As the newspaper explained:
The bill was expected to clear the Australian parliament in June and come into force on July 1. However, the version of the bill that passed last month removed crucial disclosures, with the Australian government announcing a delay of the planned public country-by-country tax reporting regime for a year.
People close to the decision said officials from the intergovernmental body had stressed to the Australian Treasury that countries that signed the 2015 OECD agreement did so on the basis the tax reports would not become public.
"This is not a good look for the OECD," the Fair Tax Foundation wrote on social media. "Their work is by definition consensus-based and often lowest common denominator. If a country wants to push on and do something more substantial, they should applaud, not oppose."
David McNair, executive director of global policy at the anti-poverty nonprofit One, argued that "this story seriously undermines the OECD's credibility in the one area that it was leading in recent years."
"I hope it prompts some soul searching on the mission and values of the organization," he added.
"OECD has put itself firmly on the side of secrecy—on the side of tax abuse—against one of its members. That's an extraordinary state of affairs."
As FT observed, "For the past decade the OECD has spearheaded global efforts to close loopholes and restrict the use of tax havens after it was asked by the G20 in 2013 to address the growing problem of corporate tax avoidance."
"While large multinationals already report some country-by-country data to tax authorities under an international agreement brokered by the OECD in 2015, the Australian proposal would have disclosed additional new data points," the newspaper noted. "And crucially the OECD country tax reports are not shared with the public."
FT's article corroborates earlier reporting by the Center for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) and the Tax Justice Network.
Two weeks ago, immediately after the Australian government unexpectedly postponed key components of its landmark bill, both groups suggested that "lobbying against the legislation by multinational corporations and their professional enablers may have been bolstered by the OECD itself—the organization which claims to set international tax rules in order to reduce corporate tax abuse."
In the wake of FT's bombshell story, Tax Justice Network chief executive Alex Cobham said in a statement that "what little credibility the OECD had is now in tatters."
"The OECD makes promises about ending global tax abuse," said Cobham, "but was evidently doing everything it could behind closed doors to protect tax abusers."
The Australian law opposed by the OECD – which may yet be adopted despite the delay – would force one 1 in 5 multinational corporations around the world to come clean about their profits and taxes. This includes many of the world’s biggest multinational corporations... pic.twitter.com/9j3KqNPee4
— Tax Justice Network (@TaxJusticeNet) July 8, 2023
Cobham called it "genuinely shocking to see it confirmed that the OECD has lobbied its own member country against introducing a key measure to fight corporate tax abuse."
"Public country-by-country reporting, when it arrives, will increase revenues around the world to the tune of billions of dollars, by exposing the most egregious profit shifting," Cobham continued. "Investors will benefit from reduced risk in their shareholdings, and employees will benefit both from lower risk and from the chance to negotiate fairly based on a true reporting of the profits of their work. Smaller and domestic businesses will benefit from a more level playing field, instead of a system that subsidizes multinationals' tax bills by effectively granting them immunity from abuse."
"OECD has put itself firmly on the side of secrecy—on the side of tax abuse—against one of its members. That's an extraordinary state of affairs," he added. "And it couldn't send a clearer signal to countries wondering whether the OECD's proposed tax rules will help them to curb tax abuse. They won't, and countries should pursue their own alternatives while preparing for negotiations to establish a proper tax body at the United Nations instead."
Supporters of UN tax leadership have pointed to the OECD’s failure to meaningfully include most countries in its rulemaking process – a concern unlikely to be eased by news of the OECD lobbying its own member against introducing a key measure to fight corporate tax abuse.
— Tax Justice Network (@TaxJusticeNet) July 8, 2023
As economic historian Adam Tooze pointed out, the OECD strong-armed Australia's left-leaning government while being led by Mathias Cormann, a right-wing Australian who previously served as the country's finance minister.
On Saturday, Cormann said in a statement that "the OECD has a proud record of facilitating global cooperation on tax policy and administration, to help ensure globally effective measures to tackle multinational tax avoidance."
"Suggestions the OECD pressured Australia into weakening legislation to tackle such tax avoidance are false," he claimed.
Cobham criticized Cormann's response, pointing out that the OECD secretary-general goes on to admit that the body's experts "raised a number of technical issues," after which Australian lawmakers watered down their proposal.
According to Cobham, the "possible unintended consequences" brought up by OECD experts are "flat wrong." He added that "Cormann seems to have confessed that the OECD did lobby Australia to weaken their proposals to fight corporate tax abuse... and also that they used a false threat to do so—one which, as experts in their own standard, they surely knew was erroneous."
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Oxfam Calls Updated EU Tax Haven Blacklist Nothing But a 'Joke List'
"Zero- and low-tax-rate countries should be automatically blacklisted," said one tax expert. "E.U. countries should not get a free pass."
Feb 14, 2023
International anti-poverty organization Oxfam on Tuesday called an update to the European Union's list of tax havens a "joke," saying no inventory that excludes "countries with zero corporate tax rates" and countries within the E.U. can be taken seriously as a true accounting of the places used by the ultrawealthy to avoid taxes.
E.U. finance ministers unveiled their latest update of the so-called "blacklist" on Tuesday, announcing that countries including Bermuda and the Cayman Islands have been delisted, despite the fact that neither country requires residents to pay taxes and both have become favorite places for corporations to register and wealthy people in Europe and the U.S. to buy property and stash their assets in bank accounts.
Luxembourg, which allows hundreds of companies to pay an effective tax rate of less than 1%, was also left off the list as it has been in previous years—despite being "one of the most harmful tax havens in the world," according to Oxfam inequality and tax policy adviser Chiara Putaturo.
"The E.U.'s tax havens list continues to be a total whitewash," said Putaturo. "The update is yet another missed opportunity to put an end to tax havens and get billions back to bridge the gap between the superrich and ordinary people."
The list is ostensibly meant to name countries that the E.U. has identified as helping wealthy corporations and individuals to avoid paying taxes. Countries on the list are restricted from some E.U. funding and face administrative penalties from the bloc, while its companion "graylist" includes countries whose tax policies warrant further investigation but whose officials have committed to some reform.
Four countries were added to the blacklist on Tuesday: the British Virgin Islands, Costa Rica, the Marshall Islands, and the Russian Federation. Albania, Aruba, and Curacao were placed on the graylist and four countries—Barbados, Jamaica, North Macedonia, and Uruguay—were removed from the graylist.
The blacklist only includes two countries—the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands—that were identified by the Tax Justice Network in 2021 as the world's 20 worst corporate tax havens. That list also included E.U. member countries France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
Oxfam's report Survival of the Richest, which was released in January, showed that worldwide, the richest 1% of households control 54% of all new wealth generated in the last decade, and nearly two-thirds of new wealth created since 2020—a trend which was partially made possible by tax havens, according to the group.
Meanwhile, food insecurity is on the rise in the U.S.; right-wing lawmakers are decimating public healthcare systems in the U.K. and Spain, sparking widespread protests; and demonstrations over the rising cost of groceries, fuel, and other necessities spread across the globe last year, with an estimated 12,500 protests in 150 countries.
"Tax havens helped billionaires to double their wealth in the last decade and contribute to corporations raking in enormous windfall profits," said Putaturo. "With this joke list, the E.U. continues to allow the super-rich and profitable to stash away their fortunes while ordinary people are battling with the cost-of-living crisis."
On social media, Putaturo noted that in 2020, the European Commission called for a reform of the criteria the E.U. finance ministers use to compile the tax havens blacklist.
"But the E.U. countries seem to love tax havens," Putaturo said, "so there has not been any progress."
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EU Bows to Bottom-Feeding Tax Havens on Minimum Corporate Tax Rate: Oxfam
The bloc "is being held hostage by a handful of European tax havens," one expert lamented.
Dec 13, 2022
After the European Union agreed in principle late Monday night to implement a 15% minimum effective corporate tax rate throughout the 27-nation bloc, economic justice advocates rebuked officials for genuflecting to low-tax E.U. member states and warned that the deal does not go far enough to prevent large enterprises from tax dodging.
"E.U. countries disregarded the opportunity to raise the bar and set in stone a tax system that is not fit for the many crises the world is facing."
"The agreement shows how the E.U. is being held hostage by a handful of European tax havens," Chiara Putaturo, Oxfam's E.U. tax expert, said Tuesday in a statement. "The minimum tax rate is far too low, bowing to the demands of E.U. countries that profit off low tax rates, like Ireland and Malta. It includes generous exemptions allowing super-profitable and undertaxed multinationals to escape the minimum tax."
E.U. officials celebrated their plan, which seeks to ensure a baseline level of taxation on profits that corporations with annual revenues above EUR750 million ($797 million) generate through their activities on the continent. They argued that it brings the bloc closer to fulfilling its pledge to be among the first to implement international tax reforms negotiated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), including a 15% global minimum tax rate that has been denounced as woefully inadequate.
But according to Oxfam, the pact "includes a so-called 'substance carve-out,' which "allows companies to pay a lower tax rate than 15% in countries where they have many employees or tangible assets such as factories and machinery."
The anti-poverty group noted that officials in Ireland, where the primary corporate tax rate is 12.5%, have "strongly advocated" against a global minimum tax rate that exceeds 15%, while Malta has been among "the most reticent E.U. countries" during European negotiations, which have dragged on for more than a year.
In recent months, Poland, Estonia, and Hungary--home to the bloc's lowest corporate tax rate, at 9%--have also blocked progress on halting the race to the bottom in corporate tax rates within the E.U. and globally.
Following months of gridlock, E.U. ambassadors on Monday night only reached a tentative agreement on a minimum effective corporate tax rate, along with an EUR18 billion ($19 billion) funding package for Ukraine, "after Hungary dropped its veto as part of a wider political bargain giving Budapest the potential to access billions of euros of E.U. cash," the Financial Times reported.
Putaturo argued that the newly struck deal "will not fix the problem of aggressive tax competition as it is a carbon copy of the weak international tax deal."
"E.U. countries disregarded the opportunity to raise the bar," she said, "and set in stone a tax system that is not fit for the many crises the world is facing."
Once the E.U.'s proposed directive on a 15% corporate tax rate is formally adopted, member states will have until the end of 2023 to incorporate it into their own national laws.
The bloc's plan follows in the footsteps of the OECD agreement on minimum effective taxation endorsed last October by 137 jurisdictions, which Putaturo characterized as "unfair to poorer countries who only get crumbs from it."
Last year, Oxfam shared recommendations for how to improve international minimum taxation at the E.U. scale.
"The least E.U. countries can still do is guarantee a more equal division of tax revenue with low-income countries," Putaturo said Tuesday. "They can do this by reviewing unfair bilateral tax agreements."
Notwithstanding criticism from rich OECD countries, United Nations members on November 23 unanimously approved an African-led General Assembly resolution to begin discussions "on ways to strengthen the inclusiveness and effectiveness of international tax cooperation, including the possibility of developing an international tax cooperation framework or instrument" under the U.N. Tax Convention, as Common Dreams reported.
Putaturo, for her part, said Tuesday that "the E.U. should not blacklist poorer countries that do not sign up for tax agreements that go against their own national interests."
"Instead," she added, "the E.U. should listen to their demands to support a global U.N. Tax Convention."
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The IRS and the Self-Minimization of Congressman Jason Chaffetz
Jun 26, 2016
Politicians who limit the effectiveness of government agencies for short-term political advantages cheat taxpayers and short-change the government. I first met Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), a brash young Republican, at a EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) gathering, which challenges big business and government invasions of privacy. Privacy was not the only issue he championed, having taken stands against corporate welfare programs, bloated corporate contracts with the government and even corporate crimes.
Chaffetz chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee - a body with powerful tools to investigate government waste, corruption, and defiance of the laws. And he has vaulting ambitions, almost running for Speaker of the House last year with only seven years of seniority.
My colleagues and I met with him and his staff soon after he took over the Committee. We seemed to have found common ground on some important matters, including pressing for full online disclosure of government contracts and leaseholds with private business (above a minimum dollar amount). Presently, taxpayers can only view a summary of these contracts, which total hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Government procurement reforms seemed an ideal subject for a left/right alliance in Congress.
At our meeting, I hoped that Congressman Chaffetz would not imitate his predecessor, Congressman Darrell Issa, the mega-millionaire show-boater who reveled in mostly useless partisan hacking of Obama's executive branch.
Alas, no such luck. Instead of doing something about the Pentagon's violation, since 1992, of a federal law requiring annual audits law with which every other federal agency complies left that massive, nearly $600 billion budget to continue to be mired in waste, redundancy, and corporate corruption.
Instead of amassing all the government's corporate welfare programs and analyzing them to determine what should be cut or kept, he has avoided doing anything about the crony capitalism that his fellow Republicans routinely denounce but do nothing about.
So what is self-minimizing Congressman Chaffetz's principal passion? Trying to impeach, censure or cause the resignation of the head of the IRS, the renowned turnaround specialist John Koskinen. The Utah Roman candle has accused Koskinen of interfering with a congressional investigation, not preserving pertinent records and lying to a congressional committee.
Koskinen repeatedly provided the committee with documentation for his denial of the charges that he was engaged in a cover-up of alleged IRS harassment of Tea Party and other conservative 501(c)(4) organizations applying for tax-exempt status. Ranking minority member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) laid out his own rebuttals, citing the Department of Justice investigation finding that "no evidence that any IRS official acted in a way that would support criminal prosecution" or that any official, including Mr. Koskinen, an Obama appointee, attempted to obstruct justice.
More telling was the exhaustive, multi-year, $2 million investigation by the Republican Inspector General of the IRS, Russell George, who cleared the IRS Commissioner of the Chaffetz Committee's charges. Mr. George, a Bush appointee, found no politically motivated targeting of these conservative 501(c)(4) applications, no obstruction of justice and no concealing of information from Congress. Some bureaucratic sloppiness, sure, but that was all.
A more cutting judgement came from Law Professor Richard Painter, former Chief Ethics Lawyer for President George W. Bush, who said "this is essentially a dispute between the IRS and Members of Congress about the 501(c)(4) organizations that further the objectives of political campaigns, including campaigns for Members of Congress."
Legal observers say Chaffetz's resolution is not legally binding and is going nowhere. So what's going on here is the Chaffetz caper is part of an overwhelming attack on the IRS by the Congressional Republicans-an attack that has turned them into major aiders and abettors of those who are sitting on $300 billion in annual uncollected taxes.
Figuring that the IRS is about the least popular agency in the government, the Republicans have repeatedly cut its seriously inadequate budget from $12.8 billion in 2013 to $10.6 billion this year, with several consequences. You pay more when corporate tax escapees and others do not pay what they owe. Or the deficit gets larger. Or you receive fewer or diminished public services. You are also wasting endless hours trying to get through to the staff-depleted IRS on the telephone with your questions.
The Democrats in Congress somehow cannot get themselves to make the Republicans pay a political price for the reckless strip-mining of the already inadequate IRS budget, further burdened by new laws like Obamacare.
The agency simply doesn't have enough specialists to investigate global corporate tax evasion; the super-wealthy's use of the tax havens like Panama and the Cayman Islands, not to mention many phony deferrals, or unlawful exploitations of tax loopholes.
The Congressional Republicans are complicit in shielding $300 million in tax evasion. Were it not for their immunity on Capitol Hill, they could be indicted for a conspiracy to protect big-time tax evaders. Every million dollars in the IRS enforcement budget brings in at least $6 million in revenue.
You as voters can call members of Congress out this November, unless your Republican Lawmaker comes clean and rejects the Party's wrecking machine.
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Panama Papers Prove America Has the Money to Transition to 100% Clean Energy
Apr 28, 2016
Last week, the IRS asked anyone who might be exposed in the Panama Papers to come forward before they get caught. And for good reason--America is a hotbed of tax evasion.
There's an old myth that we can't have a comfortable lifestyle--cars, homes, creature comforts--without sacrificing clean water and clean air, because it requires lots of energy and we don't have the money to transition to cleaner energy sources.
Conservatives argue we can't afford advancements. Liberals argue a transition is possible, but we need bridge fuels or "All of the Above" to fund a slow transition. The Panama Papers show we have the money to transition right now, but it's being looted by the global elite.
Climate change is wreaking havoc on the lives of people across the U.S. and the globe--from heat waves to floods to hurricanes to droughts. Regardless of how you feel about that, it's simply fact that the fossil fuel industry has systematically poisoned low income communities and communities of color across the globe, like the one I grew up in.
My family lived in some of the worst neighborhoods in Oakland, California. Like many others in my community, we struggled to make ends meet. As a child, it was normal for me to see families dealing with severe economic, mental and environmental problems. It wasn't until I was able to travel and live in other parts of the U.S. that I understood it was not normal for families to live in cramped apartments festering with cockroaches; kids to attend schools that are surrounded with chain-linked fences that look like prisons; or breath air filled with toxins from nearby factories or expansive highways.
In the Gulf Coast, oil and gas refineries have lead to sky-high cancer rates, asthma rates and lowered life expectancies. Many families continue living by coal plants even though their kids can't safely breathe outside because they can't afford to move nor have other viable options. And we are seeing that weird rashes, cancers and chronic health issues have become the new normal for families living near gas fracking facilities.
The fossil fuel economy wreaks havoc wherever it exists. It's past time for us to move beyond it.
But what do we hear time and time again? We can't afford to get off fossil fuels. It's just too expensive. Now, solar and battery technology are fast changing that tune--allowing rock-bottom prices that out-compete coal and gas across the country and incredible electric cars with ranges that rival their gas-guzzling competitors.
We have the money to fix it. The Panama Papers revealed just how far the ultra-rich will go to not pay taxes.
And let's not glorify it. Not one has ever gotten rich without using goods and resources financed by everybody else--electricity, the internet, roads, air, water, land. These public resources are built up by low income communities and communities of color who pay their taxes year in and year out, because to do anything else would mean facing consequences.
Not these bad actors. They've been stealing access to our national wealth all to build up their personal wealth--and then using tax havens to build yet more. At least $150 billion dollars a year of American taxes aren't paid by the ultra-wealthy. And if you look at global estimates by the Tax Justice Network--the rich are likely hiding more than $21 trillion dollars of tax-free assets offshore.
Just a small portion of these robbed assets could transform America's economy and put us on track to achieving 100 percent clean and renewable energy by 2050 and 50 percent clean energy by 2030.
We have the money to transform America's economy and moral reality--creating millions of jobs and ending our country's dark history of allowing the health of whole communities to be sacrificed for fossil fuels.
Let's put this stain on America's human rights record behind us. Let's invest in the low-income communities and communities of color we've allowed to be poisoned for far too long. You can't say we don't have the money.
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'Ditch Dodgy Dave': Anti-Austerity Protest Brings 150,000 to the Streets of London
Demand PM David Cameron's resignation over offshore investments revealed in the 'Panama Papers'
Apr 16, 2016
A protest calling on David Cameron to resign has brought more than 150,000 people onto the streets of London on Saturday afternoon.
The March for Health, Homes, Jobs and Education was organized by activist group the People's Assembly Against Austerity. The demonstrators called for an end to austerity, and demanded that David Cameron quit over the Panama Papers revelation that he profited from his father's offshore investment fund.
People's Assembly National Secretary Sam Fairbairn said:
"The Tories are increasingly out of touch with the reality of life for most people. Every time they say 'we all in it together' it's another slap round the face of millions of people. The revelations that have unfolded with the 'Panama Papers' show the super-rich hiding their wealth in tax havens on an industrial scale. This means they avoid taxes that would pay for all the social benefits that are currently under attack and people are understandably angry. We're now seeing the potential for big unrest across the country and it wont be long until this government face a movement for change they can't control."
"No ifs, no buts, no public sector cuts, and "Dodgy Dave get out, we know what you're all about" were among the chants demonstrators bellowed as they marched and rallied in London's Trafalgar Square.
The UK's major TV news outlets - BBC News and Sky News - blacked out coverage of the protest after it began at 1pm on Saturday afternoon. The lack of media coverage angered thousands who have taken to Twitter to vent their frustration.
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'Canada Is Back?' Not Until Taxation Is Truly Fair
Libs' apparent willingness to chase corporate cheats only the first step.
Dec 26, 2015
Justin Trudeau is fond of saying, "Canada is back," and in some genuinely gratifying ways, this seems to be the case. But by far, the most important and substantive evidence for this claim is still missing: an indication that the new government is willing to seriously address the issue upon which a genuine return to normal rests. That issue is how we recover from nearly twenty years of systematic looting of the national treasury through reckless tax cuts for high-income earners and large corporations.
Don't get me wrong. I feel the same relief as every other Canadian that public scientists can now speak their minds, that Stephen Harper's war-mongering is history, that we are no longer a pariah on the world stage, overnight that there is at least hope that Ottawa will take aboriginal concerns seriously and that ministers with a passion for their portfolios are more likely to deliver the goods.
However, these initiatives are the low-hanging fruit of the "Canada is back" mantra because they do not cost much money. So far, the only commitment to address the enormous social and other deficits over two decades is a modest tax increase for the highest-income earners. Otherwise, the cupboard is bare, and past Liberal governments helped make it so.
To reverse this ideological recklessness, Justin Trudeau must demonstrate an extraordinary challenge to his party's 20-year commitment to smaller government. The jury is out on whether he wants to —and if he does, whether he is up to the task. One thing is certain: without sustained public pressure, Trudeau's Liberals would be content with administering the fiscal status quo they inherited from Harper.
The first test
Their first test is on the table right now. I am referring to a report produced by the group Canadians for Tax Fairness, or C4TF (disclosure: I am on the board), detailing the Harper government's extensive damage to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). The report is unprecedented in that it was produced with the cooperation of 28 (current and recently retired) tax auditors, fraud investigators, and managers of the CRA. According to C4TF, many of them had approached the group over recent years with revelations of Conservative changes that weakened the agency's ability to collect revenue owed to the government.
Detailed in the report are several allegations by the employees, including:
- Politicians and lobbyists are increasingly finding ways to influence CRA operations.
- Corporate lobbying to avoid prosecution is a reality.
- Employees are aware of political interference when proceeding with investigations.
- There are high attrition rates of experienced professionals.
- There has been a reduction or shutdown of enforcement offices across the country.
The CRA responded to the allegations in the report by quoting high employee satisfaction surveys and identifying plans to increase "large audit" spending by 12 percent.
In terms of lost revenue, the key finding in the report was the government's systematic gutting of the tax division responsible for investigating offshore tax havens and recovering the revenue lost to the resulting tax evasion and avoidance. C4TF estimates that at least $199 billion in Canadian wealth is hidden in tax havens around the world, resulting in the loss of up to $10 billion in revenue annually.
The report calls on the Trudeau government to fundamentally change the CRA's priorities -- away from harassing charities, NGOs, and ordinary taxpayers making errors and onto the wealthy and large corporations where the vast majority of revenue is lost.
The media, however, is not focusing on the billions in lost revenue and the damage done to the CRA detailed in the report, and instead is highlighting the issue of how the 28 CRA employees who gave information have allegedly violated the ethics rules that they agreed to as part of the oath of office they signed. There is whistleblower legislation, but it does not protect employees who openly criticize public policy.
The Ottawa Citizen quoted Donald Savois, an expert in the area, calling on the government to investigate what he sees as a breach of ethics. It should have written an editorial calling for the government to fix the CRA.
Talking the talk
There are some encouraging signs that the government might prioritize the issue, though it comes not from the economic ministries. Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion has made the most encouraging comments: "I'd like to address the global economy. It seems like each time we address a problem, like the circulation of funds, businesses use tax havens and do things in our countries, but they don't pay taxes. It's an enormous problem. Whenever [it comes up], I'm told, 'Well, that's up to the international level to resolve.' I'd like to see what Canada could do."
Dion is an influential minister concerning Trudeau. Still, Finance Minister Bill Morneau will ultimately decide how much of a priority to make of the tax haven issue. He is aware of it and under enormous pressure to find revenue that doesn't require raising taxes, stating: "We're going to work on this issue and other issues, and through that work, we would expect that we'll ensure that Canadians and Canadian businesses both large and small will pay their appropriate rate of tax."
Morneau has already changed Canada's position regarding corporate tax dodging. The practice of transnational corporations of transfer pricing and tax shifting -- shifting profits made in higher tax countries to low tax locations -- robs global governments of between $100 and $240 billion a year. The new government signed an international agreement negotiated by the OECD and the G20 called Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, aimed at forcing corporations to pay taxes in the countries where the profits are made. Canada ranks as the third largest loser in the G20 in terms of the amount of untaxed corporate revenue.
The government's apparent willingness to go after tax cheats -- corporate and individual -- is good news. But this is just one step in terms of achieving tax justice and fairness and in recovering the over $60 billion a year lost through tax cuts. Letting the need for a genuine national conversation about taxes slip to the back burner would be a mistake. Now that we have a government that says it believes in governing, the question of comprehensive progressive tax reform needs to be front and centre.
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