Wince of the Week, November 26-30, 2012- Our EHRP Team winced when we read some of the Key Findings from the Institute for Policy Studies’ report “The CEO Campaign to ‘fix’ the Debt”, by Sarah Anderson and Scott Klinger:
Key findings:
- The 63 Fix the Debt companies that are publicly held stand to gain as much as $134 billion in windfalls if Congress approves one of their main proposals — a “territorial tax system.”Under this system, companies would not have to pay U.S. federal income taxes on foreign earnings when they bring the profits back to the United States.
- The CEOs backing Fix the Debt personally received a combined total of $41 million in savings last year thanks to the Bush-era tax cuts. The top CEO beneficiary of the Bush tax cuts in 2011, Leon Black of Apollo Global Management, saved $9.9 million on the Bush tax cuts. The private equity fund leader reaped $215 million in taxable income last year just from vested stock.
- Of the 63 Fix the Debt CEOs at publicly held firms, 24 received more in compensation last year than their corporations paid in federal corporate income taxes. All but six of these firms reported U.S. profits last year.
