The Halliburton Shuffle

[acmavm]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/opinion/30HERB.html?th

By BOB HERBERT

Published: January 30, 2004

<snip>

Can you spell Halliburton? R-i-p- o-f-f.

War-torn Iraq has been a gold mine for Halliburton, yet another treasure trove of U.S. taxpayer dollars for a company that has no peer in the fine art of extracting riches from the government.

But if you go through some of Halliburton's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the past several years, as I have, you'll see a company that goes to great lengths — literally to the ends of the earth — to escape paying its fair share of taxes to the government that has been so good to it.

<snip>
The company adamantly denies that its offshore subsidiaries are used to shift income out of the U.S. But it's indisputable that somebody is doing a dandy job of limiting Halliburton's tax liability. When I asked how much Halliburton paid in federal income taxes last year, a company spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, said, "After foreign tax credit utilization, we paid just over $15 million to the I.R.S. for our 2002 tax liability."

That is effectively no money at all to an empire like Halliburton. Less than pocket change. Dick Cheney must be having a good laugh over the way his old company, following his road map, is taking the U.S. for such a rixe.

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Well, at least it's finally made it into print, the New York Times no less. This is a no-brainer.

[ronatchig]

1. Can it be?

That the very dirty truth is coming out faster than Boy George and Friends can lie their way out of it?
It's almost like someone at the Times has figured out they've bet on a lame duck.

[dennis4868]

2. "60 Minutes"

last week did a piece on Halliburton and setting up off-shore dummy companies that are not anything but an empty office without a phone....