IBM Uses Dutch Tax Haven to Boost Profits as Sales Slide - Bloomberg: "“They’ve got a lot of ways to beat earnings and they definitely take advantage of it,” said Josh Olson, an analyst at Edward Jones & Co. “It’s part of how IBM operates.” IBM ended 2013 with a tax provision $1.84 billion lower than it initially projected, thanks to a tax rate of 15.6 percent -- compared with its forecast of 25 percent. Without the lower rate, the company’s earnings per share would have fallen from the previous year instead of rising, and net income would have missed analysts’ estimates by about 14 percent instead of 2.9 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg."
IBM has a tax rate of only 15.6 percent. A self-employed "person" (e.g., sole proprietor business) in the US with a gross income of $100,000 has a tax rate of 36.6 percent (15.3% self-employment tax + 21.3% income tax) -- more than double what IBM and other multi-national corporations pay! Where's the "fairness" in that?
On top of that, startups--entrepreneurs--are creating most of the new jobs in this country, not big corporations. So why is Washington penalizing the self-employed, entrepreneurs, small business? Does the US government want recession, unemployment, etc., -- more dependency on Uncle Sugar? Tax the corporations, and give entrepreneurs, the self-employed, the tax breaks!
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