04.15.15
Enjoy this fine song for Income Tax Day!
It’s Wishful Thinking Day, as it has been for the last eight in our country where nothing changes, ever, except for the piles built up by the wealthy and corporate America.
Senator Bernie Sanders has written The Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act of 2015, introduced by Jan Schakowski in the Senate.
“Cuts to programs that help Americans get ahead and stay ahead have been significant, while tax breaks have been handed out like candy to captains of industry and the behemoth corporations they run … It’s time that we end that skewed system,” she said in a press release.
Nice rhetoric, but the news buried it. This year, timely outraged squawking about corporate wealth, the oligarchy and legal tax evasion is so last year!
The New York Times, on the other hand, made a grand gesture, inviting an editorial bemoaning all the regular citizens who don’t pay their taxes.
Seriously!
IN 2006, according to an estimate by the United States Treasury Department, Americans underpaid their taxes by about $450 billion. For that year, that’s roughly equal to Pentagon spending, and more than the gross domestic products of Sweden and Switzerland.
A good chunk of the missing tax revenues comes from underreporting income, or tax evasion.
Oh, Jesus H. Christ on a pointed stick!
“Some people are hard up and can’t afford to pay their taxes,” they admit, a bit sullenly.
But the authors have an answer: Public shaming!
“We believe that shaming policies are an effective tool and should be part of the effort to make citizens pay their fair share,” they conclude.
Great stuff, so much better than the Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act! And it’s written by someone from Microsoft Research.
Why, that’s just another great inside joke, in and of itself!
In the meantime, enjoy and share, share, share this great song for Income Tax Day.
And remember to sing along:
“Woe, the rich man’s burden to pay too much tax! The poor don’t pay enough! They spend it all on liquor! And if we stopped it all right now we’d get rich a whole lot quicker!”
And this, just in e-mail from Senator Sanders:
“On April 15, the income tax deadline for most Americans, Bernie introduced a bill to stop corporations from avoiding their fair share of taxes by stashing profits in the Cayman islands, Bermuda and other tax havens. He spoke at a Capitol news conference in front of a photo of the notorious Ugland House, the Cayman Islands office that is the registered address of more than 18,000 companies. Yes. There are supposedly 18,000 companies doing business in one small building. Needless to say, it’s all a scam to avoid paying taxes to the U.S. government.”
And what will be done tomorrow? Nothing. But not because he didn’t try.
Woe, the rich man’s burden to pay too much tax; going to leave to Grand Cayman if he don’t get it back.