Should we REALLY hate corporations?
Nov 4, 2011, 8:53 AM | Updated: 9:46 am
Listen to Dave Ross Commentary: Should we REALLY hate corporations?
The latest report on corporate taxes find that over a three-year period some of America’s largest corporations paid nowhere near the listed rate of 35 percent even though they made money.
Microsoft paid about half that rate.
And Boeing actually got money BACK — $3.6 billion!
But there’s nothing illegal here — it’s all legit. Should we resent Boeing because it got tax credits for creating jobs? Should we resent Microsoft for exercising its legal right to base its business accounts in Ireland and Singapore?
Of course not. Resentment is ugly and unproductive.
The real question is not why big corporations get to cut their taxes in this way — it’s ‘why can’t EVERYONE do it!’
Now, obviously you and I are not corporations. Except that the Supreme Court has ruled that for purposes of free speech there IS no legal distinction — or as Mitt Romney so famously put it:
“Corporations are people my friend, of course they are.”
Well, if corporations are people, why, then, shouldn’t people be treated as corporations — at least for tax purposes? Why can’t we move OUR finances around? Why can’t WE shop for a country with a lower tax rate and just pretend we live there?
When your three-year-old repeatedly flushes an apple down the toilet and creates work for a plumber — why can’t you claim a job creation credit?
The reason appears to be that… while all corporations are people, not all people are corporations. Well, maybe it’s time to change that.
Even if it means I have shoo Michael Moore away from time to time.
-
Tune in to KIRO Newsradio weekdays at 5am for Dave Ross on Seattle's Morning News.
