Where Are the Other 10 Million Panama Papers?

Posted on April 29, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/04/where-are-the-other-10-million-panama-papers.html 

By Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and Rector (i.e. president) of the University of Dundee. Craigmurray.org.uk.
When I posted my scepticism that we would be given the full truth about the content of the Panama Papers by the mainstream media outlets who were controlling them, it went viral and became the first individual article to be read by half a million people on this blog alone, and a multiple of that as it was posted all round the web, translated into several languages.I also attracted some derision from establishment propagandists. I had contented that the fact the papers themselves were not made available, but we were rather fed selected information by the western and corporate state media, would limit and slant what the public was told. The initial concentration on Russia, Iran, Syria etc seemed to confirm this. But it was urged that more was to come, and I should wait, and it was suggested I would look foolish when they finished publishing. “Wait and see” tweeted the editor of the lead newspaper, the Suddeutsche Zeitung, in response to my post.
Well I waited, and what happened? The story fizzled out.
Take the UK. We got the stuff about Putin, Iran and various “baddies”. We got a story about Cameron’s dad that had been public knowledge already for four years. And we got the BBC chasing one bloke who had sold one house in Islington. And that was it.

We learnt that the majority of dodgy companies were registered in British overseas territories. We learnt that the largest number of dodgy lawyers and accountants working with Mossack Fonseca were in the UK. Yet in these millions of documents, not one major British company or individual not already known was implicated. Do we really believe that? And do we really believe the near complete absence of people implicated from the United States?
I have a clue what is going on. A young lady contacted me from Le Monde newspaper. She was one of the journalists working on the Panama Papers. She had been allocated the task of researching a Russian oligarch, and not knowing I had made any comment on the Panama Papers, she contacted me as I had background information on the man. Her email made plain that what the “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists” in Washington was closely controlling the process, and that what she wrote would have to go back to them for “checking” before publication. The ICIJ is funded, as I pointed out, by corporate America. Their donors include:
Ford Foundation
Carnegie Endowment
Rockefeller Family Fund
W K Kellogg Foundation
Open Society Foundation (Soros)
So, in one stroke, the argument that the data was not being controlled because it was “shared with hundreds of journalists around the world” falls. That argument was repeatedly thrown at me but it appears not to be true; hundreds of journalists did not have unfettered access to the entire database or free publication of their findings. It was very much a controlled leak.
Of course I am not claiming there is absolute control. It is a matter of degree. As I pointed out, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation made a documentary which directly implicated and challenged Australia’s biggest company, BHP Billiton, and Australia’s biggest foreign investor. But that only emphasises the problem.
Are we really supposed to believe that in Australia the biggest economic players were involved, but in the UK – where far more lawyers and accountants were implicated – it was just Cameron’s dad and a slightly dodgy geezer in Islington?
The corporate media still claim there are legitimate reasons, apart from avoiding tax and jurisdiction, for using companies like Mossack Fonseca. They will therefore – again contrary to a widespread claim – only be publishing a small minority of the actual documents for the public to search. “The application will not be a ‘data dump’ of the original documents — it will be a careful release of basic corporate information” says the ICIJ. Their words, not mine.
So the fundamental question is, do you trust the corporate media to give you a true picture? By passing the data to the corporate media the leaker has put us back to a pre-WikiLeaks world. My instinct is not to trust them, and the promised revelations that would prove me wrong are yet to appear.

The Biggest Companies in America Are Being Handed $27 for Every $1 They Pay in Taxes

By Tess Owen

April 13, 2016 

https://news.vice.com/article/top-50-us-companies-get-27-from-the-government-for-every-1-they-pay-in-taxes?utm_source=vicenewstwitter&utm_medium=vicenewstwitteruk 

If you're a United States citizen who is pained by doing your taxes, April can be the cruelest month of the year. Maybe you dread deciphering the tax code or doing paperwork — or perhaps you're frustrated by the realization that you're subsidizing public services beyond your means while your city's infrastructure is falling apart.
These aren't things that some of the country's biggest corporations really need to worry about.
Oxfam America took a close look at the way large, profitable companies use offshore tax havens and other methods to slash their corporate tax rates in the US rather than pay taxes where the majority of their business takes place.
The report, "Broken at the Top," found that the 50 largest companies in the UShave $1.4 trillion hidden in tax havens while at the same time receiving trillions of dollars in tax payer-funded loans and subsidies. The tax practices of these corporate behemoths cost Americans an estimated $111 billion per year and cost developing countries another $100 billion a year.
Apple, the world's second-largest company, was the company with the greatest amount stored abroad — $181 billion in three subsidiaries. Next in Oxfam's league table was General Electric, with $119 billion stored in 118 tax haven subsidiaries, followed byMicrosoft which had $108 billion kept overseas.
According to a Pew Research Poll from 2013, only 6 percent of Americans think it is morally acceptable for people not to report all their income on their taxes, while 64 percent reported being very bothered by the idea that corporations weren't paying their fair share in federal taxes.

Related: The VICE News Guide to the Panama Papers

The impact of falling tax revenue goes beyond a question of ethics, however.
The US House of Representatives is currently considering a budget plan that would slash even more federal funding for food stamps by over $150 billion over the next decade, for example, taking food assistance benefits away from about three million of the country's poorest and most vulnerable citizens. Major cuts to public health funding have also left health departments ill equipped to deal with the growing threat posed by the Zika virus.
Budget cuts have led local governments to cut corners with their spending, which can cause infrastructure like roads and bridges to crumble and pose a threat to their citizens.
Oxfam's findings come in the wake of the Panama Papers leak, which revealed how the rich and powerful have used the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca to establish offshore arrangements in order to avoid paying taxes in their own countries.
The organization estimates that $7.6 trillion is currently stashed in offshore tax havens. That's more than the German and British economies combined, and roughly a 10th of the total world GDP in 2014.
"As Americans rush to finalize tax returns, multinational corporations that benefit from trillions in taxpayer-funded support are dodging billions in taxes," Raymond C. Offenheiser, Oxfam America's president, said in a statement. "The vast sums large companies stash in tax havens should be fighting poverty and rebuilding America's infrastructure, not hidden offshore in Panama, Bahamas, or the Cayman Islands."
"When corporations don't pay their fair share of taxes, governments — rich and poor — are forced to cut services or make up the shortfall from working families and small businesses," he added. "Neither is acceptable."

Related: Panama Papers Highlight Britain's Role in Global Financial Corruption

The Oxfam report found that between 2008 and 2014, the 50 largest US companies — which include Disney, Walmart, American Express, Alphabet (Google), AT&T, Bank of America, Pepsi, and so on — collectively received $27 in federal loans, loan guarantees and bailouts for every $1 they coughed up in federal taxes. Between 2008 and 2014, they collectively received more than $11.2 trillion in tax-payer funded help.
In 2008, the world economy was hit with the biggest crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. US households lost on average nearly $5,800 in income due to reduced economic growth during the acute stage of the financial crisis, from September 2008 to the end of 2009.
The federal government shelled out about $2,050 for each household on average within that span to help mitigate the impact of the financial crisis. Meanwhile, according to the Oxfam report, America's biggest companies enjoyed the lion's share of US taxpayer funded support, receiving $11 trillion in federal loans, guarantees, and bailout assistance between 2008 and 2014.
In 1952, corporate income taxes contributed to 33 percent of the US federal budget. Today corporate income taxes cover just 9 percent of the budget.
But the era of rampant corporate tax evasion might be coming to an end. Bringing corporate profits back onshore has been an issue that has seen bipartisan support during the 2016 presidential campaign. Where the candidates differ is how exactly they should do that.
The current federal tax rate on corporate taxable income can be as high as 39 percent — the third-highest rate in the world. To lure corporations back to American shores, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump proposes lowering that tax rate to 15 percent. Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have both pledged to raise tax rates and close the loopholes that have made tax dodging possible.

Related: Why the Panama Papers Scandal Isn't Such a Scandal After All

On April 4, the Obama administration unveiled aggressive new rules to curb tax inversions — corporate mergers that are meant to relocate a company's tax exposure abroad.
The maneuver typically involves a US corporation buying a smaller company in a country with a lower income tax rate, and then shifting its headquarters to the foreign country. The new rules will dramatically shake up the world of corporate finance and have tax lawyers working for corporate firms scrambling to find other loopholes.
The new guidelines were credited with the collapse of the corporate merger of pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Allergan, which would have allowed Pfizer to avoid paying $35 billion in US taxes.
Obama called for international tax reform on the heels of the Panama Paper revelations.
"The problem is that a lot of this stuff is legal," he said.

$1,400,000,000,000: Oxfam Exposes the Great Offshore Tax Scam of US Companies

Thursday, April 14, 2016

by Common Dreams

"We can't go on with a situation where the rich and powerful are not paying their fair share of tax, leaving the rest of us to foot the bill."

byAndrea Germanos, staff writer

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/14/1400000000000-oxfam-exposes-great-offshore-tax-scam-us-companies

In 2012, U.S. companies reported $80 billion of profits in the tax haven of Bermuda. (Photo: /flickr/cc)
Using an "opaque and secretive network" of subsidiaries in tax havens, top American corporations have stashed $1.4 trillion offshore, a new report from Oxfam shows.
With "a range of tricks, tools, and loopholes," for tax avoidance, the 50 largest U.S. companies, including well-known names like Goldman Sachs, Verizon Communications, Apple, Coca-Cola, IBM, and Chevron, raked in $4 trillion in profits globally between 2008 and 2014, are contributing to inequality, the anti-poverty group said.
The report, Broken at the Top (pdf), states that such tax dodging is one of the "profit-making strategies of many multinational corporations."
As noted in the report,

• From 2008 – 2014 the 50 largest U.S. companies collectively received $27 in federal loans, loan guarantees and bailouts for every $1 they paid in federal taxes.
• From 2008 – 2014 these 50 companies spent approximately $2.6 billion on lobbying while receiving nearly $11.2 trillion in federal loans, loan guarantees and bailouts.

Explaining part of their strategy to lower their overall tax rate, the report states: "As a group, U.S. multinationals report that 43 % of their foreign earnings come from five tax haven jurisdictions, yet these countries accounted for only 4 % of the companies' foreign workforces and just 7 % of their foreign investment."
Take Bermuda, for example. The report states that U.S. companies reported $80 billion of profits in 2012 in the archipelago—but that's more than the companies' reported profits in Japan, China, Germany, and France combined.  In other words, it "clearly does not reflect  the real economic activity taking place in Bermuda."
A point highlighted by the report: "We should not lose sight of why tax dodging matters to average people."
It notes: "Fair tax systems are vital to finance well-functioning and efficient states and to enable governments to fulfill their obligations to uphold citizens' rights to essential services such as healthcare, education, and social protection for low income families."
Look no farther than Flint, Michigan—a city facing "falling tax revenues and budget cuts" that took the purported cost-reducing strategies of installing an emergency manager and switching the water system to the Flint River from the Detroit water system, which lead to thousands of children being exposed to lead contamination.
As the report was released in the wake of the Panama Papers, a massive leak that exposed how the world's rich and powerful use tax havens to hide their wealth, Robbie Silverman, Senior Tax Advisor at Oxfam, said, "Yet again we have evidence of a massive systematic abuse of the global tax system."
"When corporations don't pay their fair share of taxes governments are forced to cut back on essential services or levy higher taxes on the rest of us. It's time governments stopped pandering to big business and started working for the good of their citizens.
"We can't go on with a situation where the rich and powerful are not paying their fair share of tax, leaving the rest of us to foot the bill. Governments across the globe must come together now to end the era of tax havens," Silverman said.

Rothschild Humiliates Obama, Reveals That "America Is The Biggest Tax Haven In The World"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/06/2016 11:45 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-05/rotschild-admits-america-biggest-tax-haven-world-obama-slams-tax-evasion
In his speech yesterday, following the Treasury's crack down on corporate tax inversions, Obama blamed "poorly designed" laws for allowing illicit money transfers worldwide. Since the speech came at a time when the entire world is still abuzz with the disclosure from the Panama Papers, Obama touched on that as well: "Tax avoidance is a big, global problem" he said on Tuesday, "a lot of it is legal, but that’s exactly the problem" because a lot of it is also illegal.
There is one major problem with that: of all the countries in the world, it is none other than the country of which Obama is president, the United States, that has become the world's favorite offshore "tax haven" destination.
As Bloomberg, which first broke the story about Nevada's use as a prominent tax haven early this year, writes, "Panama and the U.S. have at least one thing in common: Neither has agreed to new international standards to make it harder for tax evaders and money launderers to hide their money."

Over the past several years, amid increased scrutiny by journalists, regulators and law enforcers, the global tax-haven landscape has shifted. In an effort to catch tax dodgers, almost 100 countries and other jurisdictions have agreed since 2014 to impose new disclosure requirements for bank accounts, trusts and some other investments held by international customers -- standards issued by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a government-funded international policy group.

In short: while Obama is complaining about corporate tax avoidance and slamming Panama, he is encouraging it in the U.S.

Places like Switzerland and Bermuda are agreeing, at least in principle, to share bank account information with tax authorities in other countries. Only a handful of nations have declined to sign on. The most prominent is the U.S. The other ona is, of course, Panama, and we just saw what happened there.

The latest reporting "underscores the secrecy in Panama," said Stefanie Ostfeld, the acting head of the U.S. office of the anti-corruption group Global Witness. "What’s lesser known, is the U.S. is just as big a secrecy jurisdiction as so many of these Caribbean countries and Panama. We should not want to be the playground for the world’s dirty money, which is what we are right now."

For Obama, however, it is important to not let facts get in the way of a good speech, or welcoming the dirty, laundered money of the world's uber wealthy, be they criminals or not, as they transfer their wealth from Panama to Nevada, Wyoming and other tax sheltering destinations in the U.S.
To be sure, the US has taken steps to keep track of US assets abroad, but not of foreign assets in the US.

In 2010, Congress passed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca, as the U.S. Justice Department began prosecuting Swiss banks for enabling tax evasion. Fatca forces certain financial firms to disclose to the Internal Revenue Service any foreign accounts held by U.S. citizens.

Fatca doesn’t, however, bind banks to provide information on foreigners with U.S. accounts to regulators abroad. The U.S. has entered into agreements with some other countries requiring such exchange with foreign regulators, but tax planners say they are considered relatively easy to avoid.

That’s where the OECD came in, with its own international take on Fatca that the U.S. declined to sign.

Panama has been one country which has done everything in its power to delay and dilute its compliance with OECD regulations.

In a January interview, an official at Trident Trust Co., a big provider of offshore vehicles, said it was seeing a large number of accounts moving into Panama because of its weak commitment to the OECD regulations. "The Panama office was extremely overworked, because a lot of people are re-domiciling to Panama from BVI and Cayman," said Alice Rokahr, a Trident official based in South Dakota. In late February, OECD officials said publicly that Panama had been "removed from the list of committed jurisdictions" that agreed to share information.

The latest coverage of shell companies created by a Panamanian law firm could give the OECD new ammunition to put pressure on the country to sign onto the information-sharing agreements, some tax experts said.

But while one can criticize Panama, and with cause, for enabling tax evasion, at least its leaders don't pretend to be saints, who do precisely what they condemn. Far less can be said about Obama.

"The U.S. doesn’t follow a lot of the international standards, and because of its political power, it’s able to continue," said Bruce Zagaris an attorney at Berliner Corcoran & Rowe LLP who specializes in international tax and money laundering regulations.  "It’s basically the only country that can continue to do that. Others like Panama have tried, but Panama can’t punch as high as the U.S."

And confirming just that, in a statement issued Monday by OECD secretary general Angel Gurria, the OECD said "Panama is the last major holdout that continues to allow funds to be hidden offshore from tax and law-enforcement authorities."
The statement didn’t mention the U.S., which is the OECD’s largest funder.
And there it is: the US, simply because it is the biggest - and wealthiest - bully in the yard, can dispense morality all day long, but just don't ask it to practice what it preaches.
Meanwhile, advisers around the world are increasingly using the U.S. resistance to the OECD’s standards as a marketing tool - attracting overseas money to U.S. state-level tax and secrecy havens like Nevada and South Dakota, potentially keeping it hidden from their home governments.
Advisors such as Rothschild, profiled initially by Bloomberg's Jesse Drucker.

Rothschild, the centuries-old European financial institution, has opened a trust company in Reno, Nev., a few blocks from the Harrah’s and Eldorado casinos. It is now moving the fortunes of wealthy foreign clients out of offshore havens such as Bermuda, subject to the new international disclosure requirements, and into Rothschild-run trusts in Nevada, which are exempt.

* * *

For financial advisers, the current state of play is simply a good business opportunity. In a draft of his San Francisco presentation, Rothschild’s Penney wrote that the U.S. "is effectively the biggest tax haven in the world." The U.S., he added in language later excised from his prepared remarks, lacks “the resources to enforce foreign tax laws and has little appetite to do so.”

And that is all you need to know.

Bernie Sanders Calls Out 18 Corrupt CEOs For Stealing Trillions, Outsourcing Jobs, and Evading Taxes

Posted by Colin Taylor   
http://www.occupydemocrats.com/bernie-sanders-calls-out-18-corrupt-ceos-for-stealing-trillions-outsourcing-jobs-and-evading-taxes/
Last week, 80 CEOs jointly published a letter in the Wall Street Journal calling for austerity spending cuts to deal with the deficit, in a new effort to “starve the beast” and slice funds away from public programs, especially Medicare and Medicaid, reducing their effectiveness to make their calls for privatization more effective. It’s the same old game that corporations and Republicans across the country have played time and time again, one that has the American people losing.
Senator Bernie Sanders, champion of the middle class and economic justice, published his own response- a scathing condemnation of their hypocrisy and blatant opportunism:
“There really is no shame. The Wall Street leaders whose recklessness and illegal behavior caused this terrible recession are now lecturing the American people on the need for courage to deal with the nation’s finances and deficit crisis. Before telling us why we should cut Social Security, Medicare and other vitally important programs, these CEOs might want to take a hard look at their responsibility for causing the deficit and this terrible recession.

Our Wall Street friends might also want to show some courage of their own by suggesting that the wealthiest people in this country, like them, start paying their fair share of taxes. They might work to end the outrageous corporate loopholes, tax havens and outsourcing provisions that their lobbyists have littered throughout the tax code – contributing greatly to our deficit.
Many of the CEO’s who signed the deficit-reduction letter run corporations that evaded at least $34.5 billion in taxes by setting up more than 600 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens since 2008. As a result, at least a dozen of the companies avoided paying any federal income taxes in recent years, and even received more than $6.4 billion in tax refunds from the IRS since 2008.
Several of the companies received a total taxpayer bailout of more than $2.5 trillion from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department.
Many of the companies also have outsourced hundreds of thousands of American jobs to China and other low wage countries, forcing their workers to receive unemployment insurance and other federal benefits. In other words, these are some of the same people who have significantly caused the deficit to explode over the last four years.”
He then released a list of the eighteen CEOs who are responsible for triggering the recession, destroying the middle class, corrupting our politicians, underpaying their workers, and outsourcing jobs overseas.
These are the names of traitors who have forsaken their people and nation to worship at the altar of greed:
1) Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan
Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2010? Zero. $1.9 billion tax refund.
Taxpayer Bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department? Over $1.3 trillion.
Amount of federal income taxes Bank of America would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $2.6 billion.
2) Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein
Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2008? Zero. $278 million tax refund.
Taxpayer Bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department? $824 billion.
Amount of federal income taxes Goldman Sachs would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $2.7 billion
3) JP Morgan Chase CEO James Dimon
Taxpayer Bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department? $416 billion.
Amount of federal income taxes JP Morgan Chase would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $4.9 billion.
4) General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt
Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2010? Zero. $3.3 billion tax refund.
Taxpayer Bailout from the Federal Reserve? $16 billion.
Jobs Shipped Overseas? At least 25,000 since 2001.
5) Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam
Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2010? Zero. $705 million tax refund.
American Jobs Cut in 2010? In 2010, Verizon announced 13,000 job cuts, the third highest corporate layoff total that year.
6) Boeing CEO James McNerney, Jr.
Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2010? None. $124 million tax refund.
American Jobs Shipped overseas? Over 57,000.
Amount of Corporate Welfare? At least $58 billion.
7) Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
Amount of federal income taxes Microsoft would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $19.4 billion.
8) Honeywell International CEO David Cote
Amount of federal income taxes paid from 2008-2010? Zero. $34 million tax refund.
9) Corning CEO Wendell Weeks
Amount of federal income taxes paid from 2008-2010? Zero. $4 million tax refund.
10) Time Warner CEO Glenn Britt
Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2008? Zero. $74 million tax refund.
11). Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier
Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2009? Zero. $55 million tax refund.
12) Deere & Company CEO Samuel Allen
Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2009? Zero. $1 million tax refund.
13) Marsh & McLennan Companies CEO Brian Duperreault
Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2010? Zero. $90 million refund.
14) Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs
Amount of federal income taxes Qualcomm would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $4.7 billion.
15) Tenneco CEO Gregg Sherill
Amount of federal income taxes Tenneco would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $269 million.
16) Express Scripts CEO George Paz
Amount of federal income taxes Express Scripts would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $20 million.
17) Caesars Entertainment CEO Gary Loveman
Amount of federal income taxes Caesars Entertainment would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $9 million.
18). R.R. Donnelly & Sons CEO Thomas Quinlan III
Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2008? Zero. $49 million tax refund.
These are astonishing numbers. There are billions of dollars missing from the federal budget because huge multinational corporations don’t pay any taxes while crying for spending cuts and austerity measures placed on the backs of the American people. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate really confronting these issues, and we must hear his message. We cannot allow the proud heritage of American democracy to slide into the dark pit of oligarchy, where the worker becomes a serf and the mega-rich rule like lords.
Many thanks to True Activist.com for the story.