GOP Tax Cut Swindle Working as Intended
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
The corporate windfall is going overwhelmingly for stock buybacks, executive pay increases and bonuses – workers getting peanuts, in many companies nothing, in some cases fired to cut costs.
That’s what the great GOP tax cut scam is all about – no middle class miracle, as Trump falsely claimed – a wealth transfer swindle to enrich corporate predators and high-net-worth individuals more than already.
Americans for Tax Fairness is tracking how corporate predators are using their tax cut bonanza, explaining the following:
- the way corporations are using their tax cut is (clear) proof that (it) was never meant to benefit workers. It was designed to benefit the wealthy, rich CEOs, and big corporations.
- only around 4% of workers are getting pay increases – in most cases meager ones, failing to keep pace with inflation, only 399 out of 26 million companies paying their workers more;
- corporate predators are using over 90% of their windfall for stock buybacks, higher dividends, executive pay increases and larger bonuses;
- they’re spending 66 times as much on stock buybacks alone as on worker pay increases – $447 billion v. less than $7 billion;
- America’s 500 richest corporations are returning less than 2% of their windfall to workers in pay increases – only 66 of the top 500 companies benefitting their workers at all from the tax cut.
Harley-Davidson is one of countless examples of how the great GOP tax scam failed US workers. Following its windfall, it closed a Kansas City plant, laying off 800 workers.
At the same time, it spent $700 billion on stock buybacks and opened a new plant in Thailand.
In 1997, H-D opened its Kansas City facility, benefitting from tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks and other benefits offered – 20 years later the plant closed, the workers let go.
During last year’s congressional tax cut debate, Speaker Paul Ryan used H-D as an example of how cutting corporate taxes would keep jobs here in America.
Trump claimed it would let companies like H-D create more jobs and more factories in the United States.
He lied. Ryan lied. So did other corporate tax cut supporters. Corporate predators are benefitting at the expense of US workers getting little, most often nothing, and many times let go.
Corporate giants are notorious tax dodgers, stashing $2.6 trillion offshore, most of it in tax havens, dodging around $750 billion in taxes, according to Americans for Tax Justice.
Republicans and undemocratic Dems are complicit in not cracking down on this scam – siding with corporate predators, exploiting their workforce for maximum profits.
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