Basketball madness might come in march, but the real Madness comes in April
American Corporatocracy Series
In honor of April madness (and April Fools) I have chosen to look at 16 of the largest U.S. Corporations who have cheated the tax man by stashing profits overseas. These Corporations are all very profitable, but are either cutting jobs, off-shoring jobs, have been a recent recipient of public bailouts or have received tax refunds. In some cases, it’s all the above.
Now that it’s tax time and the corporate sector is set to report their first-quarter earnings, the madness begins. I’m not talking about the madness of college basketball, I’m talking about the type of madness that get’s the hatred flowing through the veins.
Ladies and gentlemen, thanks to our wonderful corporate tax structure, I give you the sweet shit sixteen.
| Company Name | CEO | Money Stashed | Money Saved | |
| 1 | General Electric | Jeffrey Immelt | $102 billion | $35.7 billion |
| 2 | Microsoft | Steve Ballmer | $60 billion | $19.4 billion |
| 3 | Merck | Kenneth Frazier | $44.3 billion | $15.5 billion |
| 4 | Cisco Systems | John Chambers | $41.3 billion | $14.45 billion. |
| 5 | JP Morgan Chase | James Dimon | $21.8 billion | $4.9 billion |
| 6 | Goldman Sachs | Lloyd Blankfein | $20.63 billion | $3.32 billion |
| 7 | Bank of America | Brian Moynihan | $18.5 billion | $2.5 billion |
| 8 | Qualcomm | Paul Jacobs | $16.4 billion | $5.8 billion |
| 9 | Caterpillar | Douglas Oberhelman | $13 billion | $4.55 billion |
| 10 | Corning | Wendell Weeks | $10.8 billion | $3.78 billion |
| 11 | Dow Chemical | Andrew Liveris | $10 billion | $3.5 billion |
| 12 | Alcoa | Klaus Kleinfeld | $8.3 billion | $2.9 billion |
| 13 | Honeywell International | David Cote | $8.1 billion | $2.835 billion |
| 14 | Stanley Black & Decker | John Lundgren | $3.6 billion | $1.26 billion |
| 15 | Verizon | Lowell McAdam | $1.5 billion | $525 million |
| 16 | Boeing | James McNerney, Jr. | – | $66 million |
Who wins at this game? Financially they all do, but no one wins this game in the long run. These short term gains are outweighed by the greed and irresponsibility of tax avoidance.
All these companies use our infrastructure, technology, research facilities, higher education and national defense to build incomparably successful businesses. They do everything in their power to avoid paying anything back, On top of off-shoring money, they use write-offs, exemptions, and loopholes to cut their tax bills to almost nothing. On top of all that, some of them get whopping tax refunds and juicy government subsidies to line their greedy little pockets.
These Corporations along with other tax dodgers such as Google, Apple, Exxon, Fed Ex and countless others have been cheating the American people for too long with no thought given to Social, Moral, or Ethical standards. How long are we going to keep tolerating this?
Concise and straight to the point…complicating all of this, is that trying to not use the above mentioned corporations, is figuring out all of the subsidiaries that they own and boycotting those as well. A consumer has to be so savvy to use their dollar as a vote.