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Sears, Tax Breaks, and Job Loss: Like We Said

January 5, 2012
Image

Credit: Made available through a creative commons license from Flickr user gardener41

For the latest evidence that unaccountable tax breaks fail to promote investment for job creation, shop at Sears—while you still can.

Gov. Pat Quinn’s signature had barely dried on the Illinois legislature’s lavish new tax-break deal to retain Sears Holding Corp.’s headquarters when the company announced store closures and layoffs. The deal, valued at up to $275 million in property and income tax breaks, was signed into law on December 16. Yet on December 27, the company announced that it would close between 100 and 120 Kmart and Sears stores.

Cynically, we note that the initial list of 80 closures does not include any Illinois stores, nor have any headquarters layoffs been announced… yet. But with Sears still losing market share, and reporting another decline in same-store sales (down 5.2% late 2011 over late 2010), how safe can Illinois jobs be?

We hate to say we told Illinois so. But as we forecast in our blog of last August: when a company is ailing and it asks for a tax break, the wisdom of the plant-closings movement tells us: tax avoidance can be one form of disinvestment, another early warning sign of job loss.

Put another way: if a company doesn’t see a future in the community or the state, why should it keep investing in the schools or roads or universities?

Indeed, inadequate reinvestment in Sears has been a major theme since hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert took control of the company. As the New York Times’ Floyd Norris pointed out in a December 29 column, between February 2005 and October 2011, Sears Holdings spent only $3.2 billion on capital expenditures (i.e., physical improvements) while taking $6.6 billion in depreciation charges (i.e., physical wearing-out).

A consumer behavior consultant with America’s Research Group told the Los Angeles Times: “They are not fixing their problems. The Sears apparel strategy is still not what the Sears customer wants. They have not spent the money to refurbish their stores to make the modern and contemporary for the under-35 shopper.”

Instead of reinvesting, Sears Holdings is reportedly soon to allow some its prize jewels, such as Kenmore appliances and Craftsman tools, to be sold by other chains such as Costco and Ace Hardware. Won’t that just further reduce traffic into Sears and Kmarts?

In lowering Sears Holdings’ credit rating, Fitch warned of “a heightened risk of restructuring over the next 24 months.”

Meanwhile, Illinois taxpayers, after giving Sears a retention package worth about $178 million in 1989 when it threatened to run away, have pledged up to $275 million more after a second runaway threat.

Fool me once, shame on you…

Posted in Big Box Retail, Illinois, Job Blackmail, Subsidies, Taxes | 4 Comments »

$100 Billion Verizon is one of Country’s Most Aggressive Tax Dodgers

November 15, 2011

A new report released today reveals how Verizon Communications achieves a negative federal tax rate to avoid paying its fair share of taxes, and aggressively uses tax loopholes and subsidies to cut its tax bills even more.

“Unpaid Bills: How Verizon Shortchanges Government Through Tax Dodging and Subsidies,” was produced by Citizens for Tax Justice and Good Jobs First, and released by the two organizations and the Communications Workers of America. The report shows that Verizon, a $100 billion dollar corporation, paid an effective federal tax rate of –2.9 percent between 2008 and 2010. For the year 2010 alone, Verizon’s federal tax rate was -5.7 percent. While most Americans are struggling to make ends meet and pay their fair share of taxes, Verizon actually received a federal tax rebate of nearly $1 billion rebate from the United States Treasury.

The report is especially timely as the congressional “super committee” meets on budget and tax issues. Verizon has put the “Reverse Morris Trust” tax loophole to extensive use, avoiding $1.5 billion in taxes on the sale of its landlines and other assets, said CWA chief of staff Ron Collins.

“Verizon doesn’t use its tax avoidance gains to keep up its copper network or extend its fiber optic technology to cities like Boston, Baltimore, Buffalo or other communities or create quality jobs. It isn’t negotiating a fair contract with the workers who have made this company so successful but instead is demanding nearly $1 billion in givebacks and making sure that its top executives stay in the top 1 percent of Americans. That’s why we say ‘the 99 percent’ are picking up Verizon’s tax tab,” Collins said.

Earlier this month, CTJ placed Verizon as one of the nation’s top tax avoidance offenders, manipulating state revenue rules, seeking economic development subsidies, and structuring its business and tax affairs to produce a negative federal income tax rate. Verizon has received state and local tax subsidies in at least 13 states.

Robert McIntyre, director of CTJ and the report’s lead author, said the billions of dollars that companies like Verizon receive are simply “wasted dollars, that could have gone to protect Medicare, create jobs and cut the deficit. Too many corporations are gaming the system at the expense of the rest of us.”

Philip Mattera, research director of Good Jobs First, said Verizon and other tax dodgers “aren’t using these tax givebacks to create good jobs or invest in their companies in ways that would improve our communities. Ordinary Americans are struggling to pay their own taxes and are picking up the tab for these corporations as well. It’s a system out of control.”

Posted in Subsidies, Taxes | 1 Comment »

Large, Profitable Corporations Get Huge Federal Tax Breaks

November 4, 2011

The most consistently profitable companies in the Fortune 500 only pay about half the statutory federal income tax rate—a fourth pay less than 10 percent. Some even get refunds from Uncle Sam—30 companies have enjoyed a negative income tax rate the past three years despite making $160 billion in pre-tax profits.

It’s the definitive study that punctures calls for a cut in the federal income tax rate on corporations, provided yesterday by Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (CTJ and ITEP) in “Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers, 2008-2010.”

Looking at shareholder filings for those Fortune 500 companies that reported profits in each of the three years, CTJ and ITEP found that 280 companies paid an average effective rate of just 18.5 percent and for the last two years only 17.3 percent, less than half the statutory rate of 35 percent.

The study catalogs the underlying causes, many of which have eroded progress in the federal tax code made in the 1986 reform act that plugged many loopholes: accelerated depreciation, stock options, industry-specific tax credits, and offshore tax sheltering.

Bottom line, it’s why federal corporate income taxes have plummeted as a share of GDP from almost 4 percent in the 1960s to just over 1 percent today. And a key reason, CTJ director Bob McIntyre argues, why any corporate tax reform should not be “revenue neutral” but should instead plug loopholes and restore balance.

For those of us who follow companies that aggressively seek state and local economic development subsidies, including avid users of Subsidy Tracker, there are familiar names among the low-tax rate/high-tax break crowd, like Boeing, Walmart, and Goldman Sachs.

Indeed, CTJ and ITEP will soon release a follow-on study looking at state taxes paid by the Fortune 500. Although publicly traded companies only report such taxes in one aggregate 50-state number, the finding will show how tax exemptions and credits cut the actual tax rate companies pay (along with loopholes like Passive Investment Companies and failed giveaways like Single Sales Factor).

For a primer on how companies dodge state income taxes, see chapter 4 of The Great American Jobs Scam, and for a summary of how corporate tax dodging has shifted the burden for public services onto working families, see chapter 8.

Finally, the study also punctures the argument that the U.S. has to lower its corporate tax rates because of lower rates offshore. Of those companies among the 280 with significant foreign profits, they paid foreign tax rates almost a third higher than their domestic rates. It argues that “closing the loopholes will have real benefits, including a fairer tax system, reduced federal budget deficits, and more resources to pay for improving our roads, bridges and schools — things that really are important for economic development here in the United States.”

Amen.

Posted in Disclosure, Federal Job Subsidies, Single Sales Factor, Subsidies, Taxes | Leave a Comment »

Some 9/11 Subsidy Recipients Fail to Meet Job Goals; New York State Recaptures Funds

September 1, 2011

Pie Chart 1: The Largest JCRP Recipients

As the 10th anniversary of September 11th attack on the World Trade Center approaches, it is a good time to review what happened with the subsidies that were allocated to large firms to help them deal with the effects of that tragedy. It turns out that some companies that received those subsidies, including Goldman Sachs, failed to meet their job retention or creation goals, and some have had to repay funds to New York State.

Good Jobs New York has just completed an analysis of the Job Creation and Retention Program (JCRP), which was created in the wake of 9/11 to encourage major employers in Lower Manhattan to remain there and to encourage others to relocate to the area. JCRP, which is administered by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) and its subsidiary the Lower Manhattan Development (LMDC) Corporation, has awarded about $304 million in Community Development Block Grants to 91 companies. These funds come from a special $2.7 billion allocation for various rebuilding efforts in Lower Manhattan after 9/11.

Here are some of the highlights of our analysis:

  • Goldman Sachs which received $22.9 million of a $25 million JCRP grant, has not complied with its commitment to retain 8,100 jobs.  The state has not clawed back funds, but it will most likely not allocate the remaining $2.1 million the firm is due.
  • Approximately $13.4 million was recaptured from firms for not being in compliance with their agreements with the Empire State Development Corporation, (see Table 1).
  • Nine firms that were especially hard hit by the attack received a special allocation of $33 million in CDBG funds under the “New York Firms Suffering Disproportionate Loss of Workforce Program” (see table 2).

Table 1: Firms that had JCRP funds recaptured

As part of our analysis we obtained copies of 19 JCRP agreements between firms and ESDC. JCRP grants were allocated by the (ESDC) and/or its subsidiary, the (LMDC) but compliance falls under the ESDC. We have posted these documents here and have summarized their content in our Database of Deals along with summary information about the other recipients.

We also requested copies of the applications firms submitted for the JCRP funds, but some of them were unavailable because they had been destroyed, we were told, in a flood at ESDC offices. Missing applications included those of Goldman Sachs and American Express.

It is interesting that the applications submitted by HIP and Deloitte Consulting said the firms were under no immediate pressure to move but they received the grants anyway. Nearly all the applications we reviewed warned that the firms were considering moving their facilities to neighboring states; many said they might remain elsewhere in the city.

Goldman’s Subsidy Reach: Goldman Sachs, one of the largest beneficiaries of post 9/11 resources, has received $22.9 million of a promised $25 million grant. Goldman benefited tremendously from government incentives after 9/11, including Liberty Bonds and a special lease agreement with the Battery Park City Authority for its new office tower.  Details on Goldman’s subsidies are here. However, as of December 2010 Goldman was not in compliance with it job commitments. Employment was 8,100 in 2005 when its agreement was made but in 2010 the firm’s employment was 7,472. As of the end of 2010, ESDC had yet to recapture funds from Goldman Sachs but the firm will most likely not receive the remaining $2.1 million it was promised.

Whether Goldman Sachs needed subsidies to finance its move from one side of Lower Manhattan to the other no longer remains a mystery. Goldman’s agreement with the ESDC notes: “Goldman was not significantly impacted by the attacks of September 11th” and “The remainder of its facilities were not severely damaged or destroyed and no lives were lost.” However, the firm notes that it had to temporarily relocate employees and “experienced significant losses directly related to the overall economic impact of the attack…”

Banking on the Bank of New York: The largest JCRP grant of $40 million went to the Bank of New York. The Bank also benefited from a $90.8 million allocation of Liberty Bonds to FC Hanson for its building above Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn. Details are available in our Database of Deals.

Deal with Deutsche: On 9/11 Deutsche Bank occupied two buildings impacted by the attack: 130 Liberty Street, directly across the street from the WTC and 4 World Trade Center. In return for keeping employees in Lower Manhattan, it received a $34.5 million JCRP grant. The redevelopment of the 130 Liberty Street site has hit several bumps, including the need for the negotiation skills of former US Senator George Mitchell to forge an agreement with the various interests (Deutsche Bank, New York State via the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and insurers). In the end, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation bought the building in 2004 and has spent approximately $277 million for acquisition, demolition and developing 130 Liberty Street with the expectation of turning the property over to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Demolition of 130 Liberty Street raised the ire of residents and local elected officials who were concerned that if it is not done properly, the contaminated building could be an environmentally hazardous project. In 2007 a fire killed two firefighters at the site.

Recaptures and Clawbacks

Chart 2: Percentages of JCRP allocations recaptured

Each JCRP agreement includes a clawback provision that requires firms to return part of the grant if it does not create the jobs promised or if it moves jobs and/or operations out of New York City. Penalties are generally strongest in the first and second years of the deal. GJNY has long pushed for strong clawback provisions in economic development deals and is pleased to see this first public evidence of recaptures by ESDC. However, as chart 2 indicates, the actual percentage of money clawed back is low in many cases.

 

Grants for Employees’ Loss of Life: Ten firms received $33 million from a special allocation of CDBG funds from the New York Firms Suffering Disproportionate Loss of Workforce program. The lion’s share has gone to Cantor Fitzgerald; after merging with another JCRP program recipient, the firm is eligible to receive approximately $6.8 million more in JCRP funds. To be eligible for the program, firms have to have had “suffered a loss of life equal to at least six permanent employees AND at least 20% of its permanent workforce OR at least 50 permanent employees located in New York City.” Learn more about the program on the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s website.

Table 2: Recipients of the Disproportionate Loss of Workforce program. *Note: Recipients of this program were required to provide jobs data only for 2004 and 2005. Information for those that provided jobs data beyond these years can be found in our Database of Deals.

Jobs Reporting

GJNY has long advocated for an accountable and equitable use of economic development funds and believes, like many fiscal watchdogs and CEOs alike, that subsidies do not persuade location decisions of large firms in the finance and real estate industries. For companies to move or expand operations and create jobs, access to workforce, transportation and infrastructure, and a cluster of like-minded businesses guide location decisions more than taxes.

With that caveat and due to weak transparency on the state level, GJNY finds that a concise figure of job impacts remains elusive. A December 2010 report to the U.S.  Department of Housing and Urban Development claims 30,000 jobs were created or retained by 40 JCRP recipients that benefited from the LMDC allocation. This job count corroborates data we received from ESDC that tallies job totals for both agencies, approximately doubling the jobs cited in the HUD report. (Prior to the creation of LMDC, the ESDC allocated JCRP grants.) We encourage New York State to emulate recent transparency efforts like those at the New York City Industrial Development Agency.

Grants continue: In early August of this year, ESDC announced a $3 million JCRP grant for Oppenheimer & Co. Because this grant was announced so recently it is not in our database. More information about the proposal is available here.

See more: Information on other CDBG-funded economic development programs created after 9/11 – including several thousand recipients of the Business Recovery Grant (BRG), Small Firm Attraction and Retention Grants (SFRAG) and the special $8 Billion allocation of Private Activity Bonds (aka “Liberty Bonds”) -  are available in the Database of Deals and our Reconstruction Watch section of our website. There you will also find descriptions of various incentives being offered in Lower Manhattan from the City and State commercial subsidy program known as “the Marshall Plan.” In addition, in August 2011 the New York City Independent Budget Office released a summary of Federal Aid to New York City after 9/11.

Posted in Clawbacks, Corporate relocations, Disclosure, Jobs, New York, NYC post 9/11 resources, Subsidies, Taxes | Leave a Comment »

States Shine More Light on Tax Spending

May 19, 2011

The CBPP map shows states that do not have tax expenditure reporting (in red) and states that do not include important information in their reports (in orange).

States are doing a better job in letting the public know how much tax revenue is being lost through special credits, deductions, and exemptions, according to a new report on tax expenditure budgets released by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).

Over the last two years, CBPP notes, two more states–New Jersey and Georgia–passed legislation requiring tax expenditure reviews, decreasing the number of states that do not report on the issue to seven (Alabama, Alaska, Indiana, Nevada, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Wyoming). At the same time, the Center finds, states such as Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont as well as Washington, DC have improved the quality of their reporting.

The news is not all positive. CBPP points out that the tax expenditure budgets of 18 states are still deficient. Out of 44 states that have some kind of reporting system (counting Washington, DC as a state), ten do not report on major categories of tax spending and six do not release reports at least every other year. Two states, Arkansas and New Hampshire, don’t bother to put their reports online.

CBPP offers a good list of best practices for tax expenditure budgets. These include putting the reports online; including all tax expenditures, even small ones or those that affect few taxpayers; describing the types of taxpayers that benefit from each tax expenditure; and explaining the purpose of the various categories.

The CBPP report comes at a time when the issue of tax expenditures is receiving growing attention at both the federal and state levels. The first step in addressing the issue is knowing how much these practices really cost, and that makes the need for thorough tax expenditure budgets all the more urgent.

Posted in Tax Expenditure Budgets, Taxes | Leave a Comment »

NYC Living Wage Debate Boils Over, Into the Streets and before City Council

May 17, 2011

It’s budget season in New York City, when community groups and labor unions usually take to the streets to protest proposed budgets and this year proposals including teacher layoffs and social service cuts was a serious call to action. But marchers also had an added demand: a living wage at subsidized companies.  May 12 was planned as a day of action; it also was the day the New York City Council Committee on Contracts held a public hearing on the proposed “Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act”. The bill would require firms that receive certain economic development subsidies to pay a “Living Wage” of $10.00 an hour or $11.50 an hour if no benefits are provided.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg opposes the bill and the Speaker of the City Council Christine Quinn is undecided but the momentum is building with 30 co-sponsors (out of 51 members). The bill excludes many small businesses and only covers some subsidy programs. (more…)

Posted in Economic Recovery, Financial Crisis, Job Quality Standards, Jobs, New York, Taxes | Leave a Comment »

New Jersey’s $1 Billion Subsidy Spree

May 4, 2011

Xanadu, an "offense to the eyes."

According to a new report released last week by New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP), a nonpartisan policy research center based in Trenton, Gov. Christie’s administration has awarded $822 million in economic development subsidies in its first 15 months in office.  A Surge in Subsidies documents the recent torrent of tax credit and grants awarded by the Economic Development Authority at a time when the state is slashing budget items for education, health, and social services.

NJPP examined just four of the state’s many economic development subsidy programs.  The controversial Business Employment Incentive Program redirects the personal income tax withholding of employees to participating businesses.  The recently enacted Economic Redevelopment and Growth Grant (ERG) program has been used to approve awards totaling an astounding $351 million in diverted tax increments to New Jersey companies since February of 2010.  Once laudable for its geographic targeting, the Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit is now used so extensively that it is poised to become a major revenue drain for the state.

Despite abundant criticism of recent deals such as the state’s decision to bail out a casino owned by Morgan Stanley ($261 million through ERG) and $101 million to relocate Panasonic’s North American headquarters just eight miles, New Jersey continues to dole out major subsidies.  Gov. Christie once called the stalled Xanadu mall project “an offense to the eyes as you drive up the turnpike.”  Now, he favors a $200 million tax break to rescue the project.

NJPP president Deborah Howlett notes that the Xanadu subsidy brings the 16-month subsidy spending total to over $1 billion, yet “all of that spending to spur job creation has had almost no effect on the unemployment rate.”

Posted in Big Box Retail, Financial Crisis, Jobs, Sales Tax, Tax Increment Financing, Taxes | Leave a Comment »

K.C. Business Leaders Demand Cease-Fire on Wasteful Job Poaching

April 15, 2011

In an incredibly rapid private-sector response to our April Fool’s Day gag about that wonderful 50-state jobs truce, 17 prominent Kansas City-area business executives issued a letter this week urging the governors of Missouri and Kansas to stop offering subsidies to companies that are jumping the state line to create “new” jobs (no kidding!)

According to the Kansas City Star, the letter was not initiated by the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce. A spokesperson for Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback basically said that state would press on. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon is currently trying to convince AMC Entertainment not to jump the state line.

The paper also reported that the job-poaching wars have gotten worse since Kansas enacted a subsidy that allows employers to keep the personal income taxes of their employees (yes, you read that right), but then Kansas reportedly did that to defend itself against a similar Missouri giveaway…

Aside from the K.C. business leaders naïvely referring to their “unique bi-state community” (they’ve apparently not heard about New Jersey and Connecticut pirating New York City, or various Western states plundering Southern California, or northwest Indiana raiding Chicago, or [insert your favorite border job-war here], the letter is a lucid statement of the problem (if not a real solution). I especially like their point: “The losers are the taxpayers who must provide services to those who are not paying for them.”

And contrary to the tone of a similarly naïve piece about Kansas City-area job wars that recently ran in the New York Times, there is hardly anything new about this problem. Indeed, some people would date it to the 1937 birth in New York City of the Fantus Factory Locating Service, the grand-daddy of the secretive, powerful site location consulting industry.

Read this letter!

Apr. 11, 2011

Letter from KC area business leaders to Missouri, Kansas governors on ‘economic border war’

This letter to Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was signed by 17 of the area’s top business executives: David Beaham of Faultless Starch/Bon Ami; Michael J. Chesser of Great Plains Energy; Ellen Z. Darling of Zimmer Real Estate Services; Peter J. deSilva of UMB Bank; David Gentile of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City; Greg M. Graves of Burns & McDonnell; Donald J. Hall Jr. of Hallmark Cards; Michael R. Haverty of Kansas City Southern; Daniel R. Hesse of Sprint Nextel; L. Patrick James of Quest Diagnostics; A. Drue Jennings, formerly of Kansas City Power & Light; Mark R. Jorgenson of U.S. Bank; Jonathan Kemper of Commerce Bank; Thomas A. McDonnell of DST Systems; Michael Merriman of Americo Life; Robert D. Regnier of Bank of Blue Valley; and Kent W. Sunderland of Ash Grove Cement.

Dear Governor Brownback and Governor Nixon:

The Kansas City community is experiencing an economic border war. State incentives are being used to lure businesses back and forth across the state line with no net economic gain to the community as a whole and a resulting erosion of the area’s tax base. We are asking that you direct your Departments of Commerce to develop parallel legislation to reduce this unproductive use of tax incentives. While your departments work on this legislation, we ask that you both mutually agree to a bilateral halt to the issuance of incentives for business relocations between the two states within the Greater Kansas City area. We recognize that previously offered commitments should be honored and retention efforts and job training efforts should go forward. Let us give you more detail.

Both states offer competitive incentives for attracting new businesses. We support these incentives. We know they are necessary to compete with other states. We believe these incentives were intended to attract businesses and new jobs from outside the state or region. However, because of our unique bi-state community, too often these incentives are being used to shuffle existing business back and forth across the state line with no net economic benefit or new jobs to the community as a whole. At a time of severe fiscal constraint the effect to the states is that one state loses tax revenue, while the other forgives it. The states are being pitted against each other and the only real winner is the business who is “incentive shopping” to reduce costs. The losers are the taxpayers who must provide services to those who are not paying for them.

There are companies taking out short-term leases in hopes of taking advantage of the incentives more than once. This shuffle is a two-way street as one state lures businesses and the other responds in kind. Neither state will benefit as the stakes in this “economic arms race” continue to escalate, and we squander available tax incentives by fighting amongst ourselves.

Further, the effect of this economic border war is not only erosion of the tax base but a decrease in property values, and the chilling of community relationships on other important metropolitan issues.
We applaud an aggressive economic development effort by both states. However, we should measure success by new businesses and jobs from outside this area and the state, not from across the street. We need to compete with others … not each other.

We believe the directors of the Department of Commerce should examine the definition of “new jobs” for the granting of incentives. “New jobs” should be redefined to exclude jobs attracted to the states from counties bordering the state line in the Greater Kansas City SMSA and counties contiguous to those counties.

Greater Kansas City is unique in having a community equally divided between two states. Our community is interdependent. To compete we must cooperate. The use of these incentives is vital to attract new businesses to our region. We can’t grow this community if we’re using our incentives to steal from each other instead of attracting real new economic growth.

We ask that each state examine how incentives can be better used to grow our economy, and while that is being done, declare a moratorium on the use of incentives for relocations between states within the Greater Kansas City area. We do encourage continuing programs for job retention and job training that advance or maintain economic activity.

Thank you for your consideration.

Posted in Hidden Taxpayer Costs, Job Piracy, Jobs, New York, Site Location Consultants, Sprawl, Subsidies, Taxes | 1 Comment »

Subsidizing State Tax Avoidance

April 13, 2011

Tax Day arrives this year amid a growing outcry over tax avoidance by large corporations such as General Electric.  Corporate tax dodging, however, is not only about the offshore havens and accounting loopholes that GE’s 975-person tax department exploits to the max.  It’s also about economic development subsidies.

The vast majority of “incentive” dollars that state and local governments provide to companies in the name of job creation consist of tax breaks: property tax abatements, corporate income tax credits, sales tax exemptions and rebates, etc.

Business apologists would have us believe that such tax deals encourage companies to increase their investments and their hiring, resulting in higher tax collections. However, too many subsidies are structured “as of right,“ making them windfalls that pay companies to do what they would have done anyway. And as the growing numbers of clawback episodes tell us, many companies end up not hiring as many people as they promise when negotiating the deals. Subsidy deals are often so lavish that, even at a higher level of business activity, the tax obligations of the recipients remain artificially low.

To illustrate this, here are three examples of prosperous companies that are frequent subsidy recipients and are paying meager amounts in state and local taxes (as reported in the notes to their recently published 2010 financial statements).


Intel Corporation

State taxes: The semiconductor giant reports that it paid only $51 million in state and local taxes in 2010, which is less than one percent (0.37 percent to be more exact) of its $13.9 billion in pretax U.S. profits. In the previous two years it reported negative amounts, meaning that it received net refunds.

Subsidies: Intel is one of the most aggressive companies in the nation when it comes to seeking giant subsidy deals and preferential tax treatment. It has obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in property tax abatements and sales tax exemptions in states such as Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon when building its large chip fabrication plants and has successfully campaigned in various states for the adoption of a corporate income tax computation system known as Single Sales Factor, thereby avoiding many millions more in tax payments.

A great deal of the taxes that Intel has avoided should have gone to pay for schools. Brazenly ignoring his company’s contribution to the problem, former Intel chief executive Craig Barrett recently criticized Arizona’s educational system, saying it is so weak that it inhibits the attraction of new business.


Boeing Company

State taxes: The aerospace leader reports that it expects to receive a net tax refund of $137 million from state and local governments for 2010, despite earning more than $4 billion in U.S. pretax profits for the year. For the past three years combined, Boeing’s total state and local net tax bill was only $28 million on domestic pretax profits amounting to $9.7 billion—a rate of less than one-third of one percent.

Subsidies: Boeing rivals Intel in its unrelenting quest for tax breaks. Although Washington had long been the company’s manufacturing base, in 2003 Boeing let it be known that it would build its new Dreamliner aircraft somewhere else if the state did not approve what turned out to be a 20-year, $3.2 billion package of tax credits and abatements. Despite that concession, when it came time to build a second Dreamliner production line, Boeing chose to locate it in South Carolina after that state provided a subsidy package that is estimated to be worth more than $900 million.


Cabela’s Inc.

State taxes: For 2010 Cabela’s expects to pay less than one million dollars ($769,000 to be exact) in state and local taxes. That represents not even one half of one percent of the company’s $167 million in pretax profits.

Subsidies: Cabela’s is a much smaller company than Intel and Boeing, but it is the largest retailer focused on hunting and fishing gear and other outdoor sporting goods. It has used its popularity to drive hard bargains with nearly all of the roughly 30 localities where it has built its big-box stores. The company has received subsidy packages totaling more than $500 million for its outlets, which it promotes as tourist attractions (its taxidermy displays are sometimes legally structured as museum condominiums, making those portions of the stores exempt from property taxes). In its financial reports Cabela’s acknowledges that these deals are an essential part of its business plan. Local officials, however, have sometimes found that the new sales tax revenues generated by the giant stores have fallen short of levels projected to justify the subsidies.


Big Picture: Burden Shift

Intel, Boeing and Cabela’s are just a few of the many large corporations getting lucrative subsidy deals that minimize their state tax bills. The aggregate effects of this and other sorts of business-oriented fiscal policies are dramatic. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, corporate income tax payments contributed only 5.4 percent of total state tax collections last year, down from nearly 10 percent in 1980. This trend is a significant factor in state budget deficits.

When large corporations pay less, households and small businesses have to pay more, or the quality of schools and other public services declines, or some of both. Something to think about as you prepare your state tax return.

Note: We follow the lead of Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in considering only the reported figures for current income taxes, ignoring the deferred amounts.

Posted in Subsidies, Taxes | 3 Comments »

Public Employees and the Public Interest

February 25, 2011

Chicago Tribune, January 29, 1900

Well before Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker began his unholy crusade, the Right was heavily promoting its claim that public employee unions are a threat to the public. The title of a 2009 book by conservative ideologue Steven Greenhut said it all: Plunder! How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation.

What the union bashers are trying to obscure is that public employees have a long history of supporting policies that promote the broad public interest. This goes back to the very roots of the public employee union movement.

In the 1890s teachers in Chicago created a federation that became the first real teachers union and one of the pioneers of public employee unionism in general. When the federation, led by Margaret Haley and Catherine Goggin (illustration), was confronted with a move by the board of education to cut teacher salaries because of a purported fiscal crisis, the teachers responded to the claim of a revenue shortfall in a creative way. They launched an intensive investigation of tax dodging by some of the largest corporations in the city, finding that property tax underpayments amounted to some $4 million a year (serious money back then).

Tax officials were reluctant to crack down on powerful business interests, so the teachers sued, eventually winning a favorable ruling in the Illinois Supreme Court (though the U.S. Supreme Court later went the other way).

A cynic might say that the teachers were simply acting in their self-interest by finding a new revenue source that would help restore their lost wages. Yet their goal was also to find funds that could improve conditions in the schools—and those conditions were truly abysmal. In his 1975 history of the American Federation of Teachers, William Edward Eaton writes that in the 1890s:

The teachers of Chicago daily faced the horrors of overcrowded, unsanitary buildings stuffed with too many children and controlled by an impersonal bureaucratic structure. This they did with poor pay, no job security, and no pension system.

The efforts of teacher organizations to address these problems, through collective bargaining as well as tax justice campaigns, also redounded to the benefit of the students and their families.

The Chicago teachers were also an important force in the passage of the Illinois Child Labor Law of 1903. That cynic might say this was aimed at boosting school enrollment and increasing the demand for teachers. Maybe so, but can anyone deny that banning child labor was also a boon for society as a whole, aside from sweatshop proprietors?

In the decades that followed, unions of teachers and other government employees have been among the strongest advocates of a vibrant public sector. They have continued to be leading critics of corporate tax dodging and opponents of efforts to gut public services. Unions such as AFSCME have been at the forefront of campaigns to stop the contracting out of government functions and the privatization of public assets such as highways—practices that usually work to the detriment of taxpayers as well as public employees.

The state and local public employee unions accomplished this against all odds. Denied the protection of the National Labor Relations Act, they had to get states one-by-one to recognize their right to organize—the right that is at risk in Wisconsin and elsewhere. It took a period of remarkable militancy in the 1960s and 1970s—including defiance of laws banning strikes by public employees—before they made significant progress. Among those strikes was the 1968 walkout by sanitation workers in Memphis, where Martin Luther King Jr. was visiting to show his support when he was assassinated.

And even then there were often severe fiscal limits on the ability of public employees to bargain for substantial wage gains. To compensate, many public unions put more emphasis on securing better retirement benefits for their members. These pension rights—in effect, deferred wages—are now under attack as if they were some giant giveaway.

The real giveaways are the lavish business tax cuts and corporate subsidies that the likes of Gov. Walker promote at the same time that they are demanding severe concessions from government workers. The great confrontation of 2011 comes down a question of whose interests are more closely aligned with those of the public at large: those who teach our children, drive our buses and put out fires in our homes—or superwealthy individuals and large corporations that are reluctant to create new jobs.

With each passing day, the momentum is moving in favor of the descendants of the 1890s Chicago teachers who are fighting for their rights and for the public interest in Madison, Columbus and other capitals across the nation.

Note:  A new movement called US Uncut is organizing actions around the country calling for a crackdown on corporate tax dodging as an alternative to harmful cuts in government programs such as education.

(Reposted from the Dirt Diggers Digest)

Posted in Subsidies, Taxes, Unions | Leave a Comment »

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