The new tax havens

Re:The new tax havens by dalke on Sunday August 21, 2011 @07:37AM (#2909002)

Regarding 3: The US also has a bunch of tax breaks and loopholes which most other countries do not have, leaving the _effective_ tax rate about the same as other industrialized countries.

Which leads to US companies as being the best in how to avoid paying taxes. That's how GE managed to pay no US corporate taxes last year on $5.1 billion of US profit. (Rather, 7.4 percent but those are stored overseas and won't be taxed until "repatriated." And odds are they are holding out for another tax holiday where they can repatriate for free.)

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Re:The new tax havens by jacques_chester on Sunday August 21, 2011 @07:44AM (#2909014)

Mate, let me tell you, the USA does not have a monopoly on rent-seeking behaviour.

That said, you have weak party discipline in Congress, which makes horse-trading inevitable. That and the separation of powers means that there is no incentive to run a sensible budget and every incentive to pork-barrel.

I don't blame Americans. The US Constitution was state of the art when it was written. Australia has been lucky in that we got to see how it worked in practice before we wrote ours.

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