Well, it's official. CEOs now make more money than their companies pay in taxes. The only uncertainty they must feel is where to spend all that money. Here are some examples.
* eBay whose CEO John Donahoe made $12.4 million, but which reported a $131 million refund on its 2010 current U.S. taxes.
* Boeing, which paid CEO Jim McNerney $13.8 million, sent in $13 million in federal income taxes, and spent $20.8 million on lobbying and campaign spending
* General Electric where CEO Jeff Immelt earned $15.2 million in 2010, while the company got a $3.3 billion federal refund and invested $41.8 million in its own lobbying and political campaigns.
So, where are all these high taxes I keep hearing so much that are holding back business? It's very clear to me....I'd say very CERTAIN...that with these low numbers, we also have a revenue problem in addition to a spending problem.
But, hey, being this low on the list of income inequality is no big deal at all. We're only...like what?...60th or something? And the fact that the eroding skills of our work force, due to this inequality, are causing us to fall behind in the global economy should also be of no concern, right?
I'm just being my usual ol' silly self.
3 comments:
"John Pluhowski, eBay's vice president for corporate communications, said on Wednesday that the study did not accurately portray the taxes paid by the company in 2010. Mr. Pluhowski said that eBay had paid $646 million in taxes to federal and local governments worldwide in 2010, much of it in the United States. The $131 million tax benefit eBay reported on its U.S. federal taxes was due, in large part, to accounting adjustments made after the company settled several audits with the I.R.S. for previous years' taxes."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/business/where-pay-for-chief-executives-tops-the-company-tax-burden.html
That part seems to have been left out of the Reuters account. Without seeing the books, I don't know one way or the other. The companies have obvious incentives to shade the truth, but only a fool would deny that the IPS doesn't have a huge axe to grind.
Only a fool would deny...
A fool, or somebody who knows what he wants to believe.
And the fact that the eroding skills of our work force, due to this inequality, are causing us to fall behind in the global economy should also be of no concern, right?
So tell me, how do you come to this conclusion from pay inequality?
American workers are some of the most productive in the world. How does pay at the top translate to eroding skills?
Do workers not have the right to better themselves by going to school, changing jobs, etc.? And whose business is it anyway what a company pays its employees? What if a private company (or Public for that matter) paid everyone 10 mil a year? You going to complain that others in the same industry don't make that much? Maybe we should put you as 'Czar' of company pay and you can dictate salaries just to ensure it is 'fair'.
Ultimately, this boils down to nothing but envy.
Envy is ignorance. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
And you revel in it...sheesh.
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