Business for Shared Prosperity

By Tyler Kingkade, Huffington Post
CNBC, Nov 7, 2011 

WASHINGTON -- Outraged by a new report about America's largest corporations dodging their taxes, small business owners are orchestrating a new campaign to pressure the congressional super committee into delivering a legislative fix.

Twenty-five companies, led by Wells Fargo, AT&T, and Verizon,enjoyed a combined $114.8 billion in tax breaks from 2008 to 2010, according to a joint study by Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released Thursday. Of 280 Fortune 500 companies the report examined, analysts detailed a combined $222.7 billion in tax subsidies.

Wells Fargo collected $681 million from taxpayers after making $49.3 billion in profits in 2008-10. Verizon Communications earned $32.5 billion over the same period, but got an extra $951 million back from taxpayers.

Wells Fargo told The Huffington Post the data in the report was taken out of context, just as General Electric did on Thursday.

"The truth is that over the past 10 years Wells Fargo has paid more than $30 billion in income taxes to federal and state authorities and billions more in other taxes, and it fulfills all tax obligations," Ancel Martinez, a spokesperson for Wells Fargo, said in a statement. "The years cited by the study were unusual for Wells Fargo, as results included significant losses as a consequence of its acquisition of Wachovia [12/31/08], which when realized reduced Wells Fargo's taxable income."

Martinez added Wells Fargo expects to pay significant income taxes in 2011.

But that's not enough for some small business owners.

Jody Gorran, owner of Aquatherm Industries Inc., which employs 45 people in Lakewood, N.J. to manufacture solar panels, called it "unconscionable." Gorran told HuffPost he felt like small businesses are bearing the brunt of the business tax burden "simply because a large corporation [has] potentially hundreds of accountants looking to minimize their tax liability."

"It's crazy, it's like creating this false dichotomy as if it were reality [that taxes are too high]," Gorran said. "We pay that rate [35 percent] but no one else seems to bother."

Business for Shared Prosperity, the Main Street Alliance and the American Sustainable Business Council sent a letter this week to super committee members charged with finding ways to reduce the deficit asking them to make the corporate income tax more equitable.

"The tax code should promote a level playing field between large multinational corporations and smaller, domestic businesses," the letter read. "We need to close loopholes that allow large multinational corporations to avoid their tax obligations by shifting U.S. profits offshore, rather than rewarding firms engaging in this practice with either short or permanent tax holidays."

"Big Business is getting away with taxation murder," said Frank Knapp, president and CEO of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce, in a statement. "They pay little or no taxes on massive U.S. profits and then have the gall to lobby for lowering the 'high' corporate tax rate. They’re even campaigning for a tax holiday to 'repatriate' profits they have stashed offshore to avoid taxes. Patriots pay their taxes; they don’t dodge them."

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