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BSP In the News
- The Hill: Frank Knapp, Small business opposes multinational corporations' tax avoidance
4/9/13 - Minimum Wage News at our BUSINESS FOR A FAIR MINIMUM WAGE website
4/8/13 - The Hill: Report: Taxpayers shoulder burden for offshore tax haven use
4/5/13 - Paramus Post (NJ): Offshore Tax Havens Cost Average Taxpayer $1,026 a Year, Small Businesses $3,067
4/5/13 - U.S. PIRG, Sen. Levin, Small Business Leaders Release "Picking up the Tab 2013: Average Citizens and Small Business Owners Pay the Price for Offshore Tax Havens"
4/4/13 - American Forum: Scott Klinger, Half Time at the Federal Budget Super Bowl
1/31/13 - Philadelphia Daily News: Talking Small Biz
1/22/13 - Triple Pundit: Don’t Blame Google and Starbucks For Minimizing Tax Bills
1/10/13 - Roll Call: Time for Plan C - Close the Floodgates on Corporate Tax Dodging
12/28/12 - CFO: Small Biz, the Fiscal Cliff, and the Big, Bad Bank
12/27/12 - Westerly Sun: Business leaders urge change in tax system
12/27/12 - McClatchy Tribune News Service: A plea for tax fairness from small businesses
12/24/12 - UPI: 'Fiscal cliff': Is there a Plan C to avoid tax increases, spending cuts?
12/23/12 - Madison Capital Times: Wisconsin business owners join national call to raise corporate taxes
12/23/12 - Charlotte Observer: Charlotte small business owners urge tax reform
12/20/12 - Politico: 'Revenue-neutral' tax reform takes hit
12/14/12 - National Journal: Sen. Levin, Small Businesses Push for Corporate Tax Hikes
12/14/12 - Washington Post: Sen. Levin wants corporate tax revenue in a fiscal cliff deal
12/14/12 - The Hill: Corporate revenues must be in debt deal
12/14/12 - Accounting Today: Small Business Leaders Urge Closing of Corporate Tax Haven Loopholes
12/14/12
CFO: Small Biz, the Fiscal Cliff, and the Big, Bad Bank
As the clock ticks down on the fiscal cliff, small business wonders why it pays effective tax rates higher than Apple, Google, or Microsoft. Meanwhile, UBS is again revealed as a global fraudster.
By David Rosenbaum
CFO, Dec 27, 2012
According to a February 2012 survey sponsored jointly by three small-business advocacy groups, the American Sustainable Business Council, Main Street Alliance, and Small Business Majority, the greatest point of agreement (90%) among the 500 small-business owners they polled (50% self-identifying as Republicans; 32% as Democrats, and 15% as independent) was that large corporations using loopholes to avoid taxes “that small businesses have to pay” cause their own businesses to suffer.
“Small business,” says David Levine, chief executive officer of the ASBC, believes that “the [tax] rules are rigged against them.”
Big companies, Levine says, can register their intellectual property — trademarks, patents, and other creative assets — with offshore entities, charge large fees, take the cash, and send it to tax-favorable jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein, and, of course, Switzerland, and “end up with no [taxable] profit in the U.S. and big [lightly taxed] profits offshore.”
Small businesses, obviously, don’t have the wherewithal to take advantage of this dodge. But more important than the annoyance of trying to compete on a playing field tilted in someone else’s favor, as Levin points out, is that the tax money the United States doesn’t collect obviously isn’t there to invest in the infrastructure that small businesses depend on. Nor is it available to the banks small businesses turn to when seeking credit. Nor does it flow through local economies to create the demand upon which small business either feeds or starves.
“What’s most grating to small business,” adds Scott Klinger, director of tax policy for Business for Shared Prosperity, an ASBC partner, “is when these large corporations say, ‘We’re just following the law.’” ...
Read more:
http://www3.cfo.com/article/2012/12/credit-capital_fiscal-cliff-small-bu...
Copyright 2012 CFO Publishing
