Christian Aid: Tax evasion costs 1,000 children's lives a day

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

Christian Aid: Tax evasion costs 1,000 children's lives a day 12 May 2008 06:54:00 GMT

The lives of 1,000 young children a day are being lost to disease and poverty in poor countries because of illegal trade-related tax evasion, says a new report from Christian Aid.

It has calculated that this evasion costs the developing world at least US$160bn in lost revenue annually. The culprits are companies using false accounting to reduce their tax liability.

If that money was allocated according to current spending patterns, the lives of 350,000 children under the age of five, 250,000 of them infants, could be saved every year.

The sum is almost one and a half times the amount given as aid to the developing world every year. If the amount that is also lost through legal tax avoidance dodges were added, it would be many times greater.

Christian Aid's report, Death and taxes: the true toll of tax dodging, looks at the impact of tax dodging, both legal and illegal, on the developing world. It blames the secrecy offered by more than 70 tax havens for widespread abuses, and highlights the role of facilitators, including the big accountancy firms, in promoting their use.


Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/218275/121057556260.htm

[Judi Lynn]

1. American corporate taxdodging: "The lucrative arts of war and not paying taxes"

The lucrative arts of war and not paying taxes
Monday, May 12, 2008

Congress is finally moving to shut one of the more egregious forms of Iraq war profiteering: defense contractors using offshore shell companies to avoid paying their fair share of payroll taxes. The practice is widespread and congressional investigators have been dispatched to one of the prime tax refuges, the Cayman Islands, to seek a firsthand estimate of how much the U.S. Treasury is being shorted.

No one will be surprised to hear that one of the suspected prime offenders is KBR, the Texas-based defense contractor, formerly a part of the Halliburton conglomerate allied with Vice President Dick Cheney. According to a report in The Boston Globe, KBR, which has landed billions of dollars in Iraq contracts, has used two Cayman shell companies to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in payroll, Medicare and unemployment taxes.

Unfortunately, right now there is nothing illegal about this. The House has approved legislation to plug the dodge by treating foreign subsidiaries of defense contractors as what they are - American employers required to pay taxes. The Senate must quickly follow suit and not buy the contractors' line that listing American workers at offshore companies is a cost saving passed on patriotically to the war effort. No less insulting, the Cayman dodge has been blocking Americans from the protection of labor and anti-discrimination laws.

The House has taken on another common abuse: voting to deny future government contracts to any company that fails to pay its corporate taxes, including an estimated 25,000 defense contractors keeping billions of dollars due the Treasury. The Senate should approve that legislation as well.

More:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/12/opinion/ediraq.php

[denverbill]

2. I just really do not understand why Democrats haven't shut this down.

Yes, Bush might be able to veto any law they try to pass, but this could be a huge campaign issue to any Republican who voted to sustain his veto.

If corporations are allowed to do this, I should be able to as well. After all, corporations are 'people' according to the Supreme Court, and if corporations are people, then people should be allowed to be corporations.

[kestrel91316]

3. Remember, only the Little People pay taxes........

[AlbertCat]

4. Let us also remember....

That churches don't pay taxes either....nor do their businesses. If churches and businesses payed their fair share we could all take a cut in our taxes.

[Thothmes]

5. Why

Those tax dollars are necessary to cover the cost of universal health care, end global warming, completely end poverty in this country, completely rebuild the physical infrastructure of the Country, upgrading education from pre-K through college, plus a lot of other worthy objectives. The taxes of churches and their businesses will help, but it will not pay only a fraction of the tab. We citizens bear the responsiblilty fund these programs. JMO