Bailed-out companies using offshore havens to cheat US out of taxes

[nichomachus]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/16/AR2009011602602.html?hpid%3Dtopnews⊂=AR

A majority of America's largest publicly traded companies and the U.S. government's largest federal contractors -- including some receiving millions in federal bailout money -- use multiple subsidiaries in offshore tax havens to conduct business and avoid paying U.S. taxes, a new report finds.

The new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, released today by Sens. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), lists Citigroup and Morgan Stanley as having set up hundreds of tax haven subsidiaries, along with American International Group and Bank of America. Also in the tax-haven list are well-known companies and such federal contractors as American Express, Pepsi and Caterpillar.

[Andy823]

1. Time to go after them.

Congress needs to get busy and pass some laws to regain all the tax money these crooks have gotten out of paying over the years. If they don't pay up, they should be banned from doing any business at all in this country!

[mod mom]

3. Really. We need to send in troops to reclaim the taxpayers $ and end their ability

to place funds in untouchable places. I can't believe this is even allowed to happen. The financial system needs total transparency!

Send the crooks to federal penitentiary to do real hard time!

[leftstreet]

2. Corporations have rights! They are persons, too!

:crazy:

[annabanana]

4. Talk about your Friday night newsdump!

This ought to have pitchforks & torches in the streets!

[Frustratedlady]

5. This makes me livid. How many people are doing this? I knew it was bad, but how...

could they have the nerve to come to the trough and take money from actual taxpayers?

Legal, schmegal. Enough of this s***!

[tridim]

6. Can't congress make this practice illegal next week?

What are they waiting for?