Remember learning that G.E paid no income tax at all? Well, you ain't seen nuttin' yet.

[No Elephants]

Facebook pays no tax for 2012, gets $429 million refund

A legal corporate tax benefit flipped Facebook's liability into a refund, sparking online controversy over "corporate welfare."

Even though Facebook reported $1.1 billion in pre-tax profits from U.S. operations in 2012, it will probably pay zero federal and state taxes — and even receive a federal tax refund of about $429 million — according to a Feb. 14 statement from Citizens for Tax Justice.

The tax-research and lobbying organization calls the footnotes in Facebook’s Jan. 30 financial statement “an amazing admission,” but there’s nothing illegal about the corporate tax breaks the company is claiming. Companies are allowed to treat the cost of non-cash compensation, such as stock options, as an expense that reduces profits, just like salaries.

snip

Facebook says it had a $559 million federal tax liability in 2012, but that liability isn’t a payment. In a footnote, the company also said that it had a $1.03 billion “excess tax benefit” last year related to “stock option exercises and other equity awards.” That benefit is what flips the federal tax liability into a refund, after a small percentage is applied to state taxes.

Citizens for Tax Justice says companies should treat stock options the same in their reports to shareholders as they do in their tax filings. According to its 2012 annual earnings report, Facebook said it paid some "income and other employment taxes," and paid $2.86 billion to "the appropriate tax authorities.” Nonetheless, the Citizens for Tax Justice report led to online backlash against the social network.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/blog/2013/02/18/Facebook-pays-no-tax-for-2012-gets-429-million-refund/4841361196858/#ixzz2LIZkykmV

[Enthusiast]

1. Unfuckingbelievable!

And they want to cut social security.

[No Elephants]

2. And Medicare and fuel subsidies to the poor and anything else they can get their hands on

without being run out town on a rail (whatever the hell that means).

But, they are simply thinking of the greater good.


Facebook employes people. Some people who paid into Social Security and Medicare may be nothing more than old and disabled takers.


So, you can see government's dilemma, right? If government keeps helping the takers who paid into the system, how the hell is it going to have enough money to pay a half billion refund to a job creator?

Get your priorities straight!!

[Enthusiast]

3. Effective corporate taxes are very low for the huge corporations.

But every day a filthy Republican gets on TV and claims, "Corporate taxes are the highest in the world."

And I have heard President Obama claim that corporate taxes are too high. WTF?

The nation's great infrastructure built in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s was not built on zero corporate taxes.

[No Elephants]

4. The idea that you get to live or operate in a country without paying your share

is insane.

We will never get money out of politics, though, so we're screwed.

And we're no help either.

70,000 structurally unsafe bridges. Every truck driver in the country, if not every single person in the country, should have gone on strike when they heard that in the SOTU. If your kid's school bus goes over a bridge twice a day, maybe you should be more worried about government revenues than about guns.

[Enthusiast]

5. The infrastructure thing

will be delayed until there is s string of bridge failures. It will happen.

Of course the Republican tax thing is ridiculous. We have to have revenues from somewhere. Cutting the social safety net will only devastate the economy, not to mention take for the least of us. The showdown will be soon. I can't help but think those of us with the least influence will suffer the greatest losses.

This is just one more reason the Bush Administration should be held to account for the disaster that was Iraq.

[No Elephants]

6. Well, as you may have heard during the Republican Presidential primary debates,

the supposedly Christian Republicans actually cheered out loud the prospect of a patient showing up at an emergency room uninsured and indigent be left to die.

Supposedly, their Christianity does not extend to keeping a poor person alive by taxes, only by voluntary charitable contributions.

I guess someone saw Jesus wink when asked if he thought religious folk in Israel should pay taxes to the central government (Rome). (Can Ron Paul be that old?)