GAO: Many Bailout Recipients Operating in Tax-Haven Countries

[babylonsister]

GAO: Many Bailout Recipients Operating in Tax-Haven Countries
By Mike Lillis 1/16/09 2:21 PM


Want to lower your taxes and maybe get a bailout?

Incorporate.

The Government Accountability Office released a report today indicating that 83 of the 100 largest U.S. corporations — including many that are benefiting from Washington’s many taxpayer-funded bailouts — operate subsidiaries in countries known to be tax havens. Additionally, 63 of the 100 largest publicly-traded federal contractors have similar subsidiaries in the same spots, according to the report.

And that might not be all.

According to the GAO:

{T}he SEC only requires public corporations to report significant subsidiaries, so the number of subsidiaries in jurisdictions listed as tax havens or financial privacy jurisdictions for each corporation or federal contractor may be understated in this report.

Browsing the list of companies, you’ll find many of the same names we’ve heard in recent months connected to federal bailouts. For example, American International Group, which was bailed out last year to the tune of roughly $150 billion, has 18 subsidiaries in eight tax-haven countries, including Bahrain, Switzerland and Bermuda, the GAO found.

Bank of America — which received a $138 billion lifeline today, on top of $15 billion it’s already received under the Wall Street bailout (not to mention $10 billion injected into Merrill Lynch ahead of its acquisition by BoA) — operates 115 subsidiaries in 11 tax-haven countries, including Gibraltar and the Cayman Islands.

The list goes on.

more...

http://washingtonindependent.com/26083/gao-many-bailout-recipients-operating-in-tax-haven-countries

[azul]

1. yes, US taxpayers are being snookered

The multinationals, that many US taxpayers wrongly believe are US companies exclusively, get to pick which countries to get the cheapest labor and lowest taxes.

They have little loyalties to any country and are somehow seemingly alive legally. Mercenary multinationals live for profits and plunder, let stupid and compromised countries beware, they will take the money and run and hide.

[shintao]

2. GM is in the same Kettle!!

I disagreed with giving GM a bailout. For years they have bucked the consumer for environmentally safe alternative cars as if they were in Big Oils pocket, even defying congress. They ran every other small car manufacture out of America. ie. Avanti And these people have at least a dozen car plants running outside the USA, not using any American made products or American labor!!! GM is not an American corporation or concerned with Americans or their workers who they have fought tooth & nail.

Those foreign corps should have been sold off before they got a US financed bailout, if then.

And in my opinion, I would have given each GM worker in the USA a million dollar severence check, and let the small inovative car people in the door. It would have cost us less money to do so. And we could have also given these workers a tax break if they joined together and started their own new car business in the United States. ie. There is a pencil factory in my town that the workers bought out and kept running to this day, when the owners were closing the doors.

[texastoast]

3. Not a penny unless they are registered in the U.S.

ALL of the people who voted to pass this bloody bailout through should have to put their own money in those greedy little palms. Ptooey.

Oh, I just don't want to start this weekend this way.