Want to Avoid $600 Billion in Corporate Tax ? Go to Puerto Rico, USA

NOTE : You may also benefit from PR Law 22 which allows people to move to Puerto Rico, USA and not pay Puerto Rico State or Federal taxes. All this money generated in the island, and it doesn't enter the local or national economy!

Oh.. by the way...due to this and other similar bad decisions made by our political leaders, we puertoricans are requesting the US to allow us to qualify to apply for Bankruptcy. 

As a result, about 600,000 tax paying citizens have abandoned the island in the last few years and moved to another area in the US.

MJ

Fortune 500 Corporations Are Likely Avoiding $600 Billion in Corporate Tax Using Offshore Tax Havens

September 3, 2015

By Citizens for Tax Justice Staff 

As Labor Day weekend approaches, a tanned and rested Congress is poised to return to Washington to hash out corporate tax changes. Much of the debate over corporate tax reform in Washington sensibly focuses on how to encourage Fortune 500 corporations to repatriate and pay U.S. taxes on the $2.1 trillion on profits they have declared to be “permanently reinvested” (and thereby free of U.S. taxes) overseas. But an overlooked fact in this debate is just how much tax companies have avoided by keeping these profits (on paper, at least) offshore. An April 2015 CTJ report estimates that Fortune 500 corporations likely have avoided $600 billion in federal income taxes on these offshore profits.

Corporations declaring their intention to keep profits permanently offshore are required to estimate, if possible, the amount of U.S. tax they would pay if they repatriate these profits. Most companies legally avoid complying with this rule simply by declaring that it is too complex to make the calculation. But CTJ went through corporate filings and found 57 Fortune 500 corporations do comply. (See table below for details) These companies estimate they would pay a 29 percent tax rate on repatriation. (Since the federal tax on repatriated profits is 35 percent minus any taxes already paid to foreign countries, this means these companies have paid an average tax rate of just 6 percent on these profits, an indicator that much of this income is being kept in low-rate tax havens.)

Hundreds of other companies with offshore cash fail to make this disclosure, so it is impossible to know precisely how much corporate income tax they have avoided on their offshore cash. But if these companies, which include notorious tax avoiders General Electric, Pfizer, Merck and IBM, owed tax at the same 29 percent average rate reported by disclosing companies, the unpaid tax bill on Fortune 500 corporations’ offshore cash would be $600 billion (that is, $2.1 trillion times 29 percent). Since almost two-thirds of Fortune 500 corporations disclose owning subsidiaries based in offshore tax havens, it seems likely that many of these corporations are sheltering their “permanently invested” profits in these havens.

Congressional tax writers are sensibly focusing their energies on finding a way to make companies with offshore cash pay at least some tax on these profits. But CTJ’s finding suggests that any plan that would bring in less than $600 billion would amount to yet another giveaway for corporate tax dodgers.  

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57 Companies That Disclose Likely Tax Payments from Repatriation
	Unrepatriated	Estimated
	Income	Tax Bill	Implied	Implied Foreign
Company Name	$ Millions	$Millions	Tax Rate	Tax Rate
Hertz Global Holdings	$ 475	$ 184	38.7%	0.0%
Owens Corning	1,400	511	36.5%	0.0%
Safeway	180	65	36.1%	0.0%
Amgen	29,300	10,500	35.8%	0.0%
Qualcomm	25,700	9,100	35.4%	0.0%
Gilead Sciences	15,600	5,500	35.3%	0.0%
Wynn Resorts	412	144	35.0%	0.0%
Advanced Micro Devices	349	122	35.0%	0.0%
AK Steel Holding	27	10	34.9%	0.1%
Biogen Idec	4,600	1,550	33.7%	1.3%
Western Digital	8,200	2,700	32.9%	2.1%
Apple	157,800	51,615	32.7%	2.3%
Microsoft	92,900	29,600	31.9%	3.1%
Nike	6,600	2,100	31.8%	3.2%
PNC Financial Services Group	77	24	31.2%	3.8%
American Express	9,700	3,000	30.9%	4.1%
Oracle	32,400	10,000	30.9%	4.1%
FMC Technologies	1,619	492	30.4%	4.6%
Baxter International	13,900	4,200	30.2%	4.8%
NetApp	3,000	896	29.9%	5.1%
Symantec	3,200	918	28.7%	6.3%
Wells Fargo	1,800	513	28.5%	6.5%
Group 1 Automotive	17	5	28.1%	6.9%
Jacobs Engineering Group	26	7	28.0%	7.0%
Leucadia National	171	46	26.9%	8.1%
Clorox	186	50	26.9%	8.1%
Citigroup	43,800	11,600	26.5%	8.5%
Bank of America Corp.	17,200	4,500	26.2%	8.8%
Air Products & Chemicals	5,894	1,466	24.9%	10.1%
Northern Trust	1,100	255	23.2%	11.8%
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.	31,100	7,000	22.5%	12.5%
Ameriprise Financial	180	40	22.2%	12.8%
State Street Corp.	4,200	876	20.9%	14.1%
Kraft Foods Group	578	118	20.4%	14.6%
Bank of New York Mellon Corp.	6,000	1,200	20.0%	15.0%
Walt Disney	1,900	377	19.8%	15.2%
Lockheed Martin	291	55	18.9%	16.1%
Goldman Sachs Group	24,880	4,660	18.7%	16.3%
Graham Holdings	58	11	18.3%	16.7%
Viacom	2,500	438	17.5%	17.5%
Tenneco	737	121	16.4%	18.6%
Sherwin-Williams	4	1	14.6%	20.4%
Gap	581	72	12.4%	22.6%
Cigna	1,800	218	12.1%	22.9%
Morgan Stanley	7,364	841	11.4%	23.6%
Murphy Oil	6,045	684	11.3%	23.7%
Caesars Entertainment	118	13	11.0%	24.0%
Paccar	4,100	400	9.8%	25.2%
Anixter International	679	52	7.6%	27.4%
Laboratory Corp. of America	30	2	6.4%	28.6%
W.R. Berkley	58	3	5.3%	29.7%
Ford Motor	4,300	200	4.7%	30.3%
PPG Industries	5,000	200	4.0%	31.0%
Rock-Tenn	240	9	3.7%	31.3%
Timken	487	10	2.1%	32.9%
Occidental Petroleum	9,900	140	1.4%	33.6%
Assurant	163	1	0.6%	34.4%
TOTAL	$ 590,926	$ 169,412	28.7%	6.3%
Source: CTJ analysis of companies' 10-Ks