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‘US Uncut’ crashes Bank of America ‘Tax Dodger Conference’
By David Edwards
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011 -- 12:41 pm

demonstrators crashed Bank or America's Investor Conference Tuesday to make the point that when corporations don't pay taxes, governments are forced to lay off public workers.

"When corporations like Bank of America don't pay their fair share of taxes, we have to 'cut' teachers, firefighters, and public servants," one protester shouted. "Do you pay your taxes? So do we. Why don't corporations pay their fair share, just like everyone else?"

"Bank of America is Bad for America," the added. "Bank of America pockets billions in profits and bailouts, but $0 in American taxes - that's immoral and un-American."


A list compiled by Forbes showed that Bank of America paid no taxes on $4.4 billion in income in 2009.

ASUG8 wrote:If BofA is breaking IRS guidelines (which they likely are) then they deserve whatever penalties the IRS throws at them. Why isn't $4.4B of income with no taxes paid showing up as a red flag to the IRS? Are they busy chasing down the gross offenders that failed to report $100 in interest expense?

The IRS is tasked with interpretation and enforcement of tax law - no question BofA (like many companies) operates in the grey area of tax code and challenges the IRS to prove that their interpretation of tax codes is incorrect. It's a freakin' shell game, hiding earnings and assets to avoid taxation and as soon as Congress enacts a more restrictive code companies with the resources to do so will find ways around it.

kalm wrote:

ASUG8 wrote:If BofA is breaking IRS guidelines (which they likely are) then they deserve whatever penalties the IRS throws at them. Why isn't $4.4B of income with no taxes paid showing up as a red flag to the IRS? Are they busy chasing down the gross offenders that failed to report $100 in interest expense?

The IRS is tasked with interpretation and enforcement of tax law - no question BofA (like many companies) operates in the grey area of tax code and challenges the IRS to prove that their interpretation of tax codes is incorrect. It's a freakin' shell game, hiding earnings and assets to avoid taxation and as soon as Congress enacts a more restrictive code companies with the resources to do so will find ways around it.

I'm not saying it's illegal or that I wouldn't do the same in their shoes. But this whole concept of who's fleecing the system and hurting the average tax payers the most is a fucking farce. BTW, congressional conks want to make significant cuts to IRS enforcement. You know, to save the tax payers money.

ASUG8 wrote:

kalm wrote:
I'm not saying it's illegal or that I wouldn't do the same in their shoes. But this whole concept of who's fleecing the system and hurting the average tax payers the most is a fucking farce. BTW, congressional conks want to make significant cuts to IRS enforcement. You know, to save the tax payers money.

You make this sound like it's a new phenomenon, and that it only occurs when republicans are a majority. I doubt a lot of conk tax law has been enacted over the last few years, and those are the laws we're operating under now. I agree that we ought to be more aggressive with corporations that are clearly fleecing the government - but is the problem truly with enforcement or is it that the tax code is written too ambiguously? Probably both, but you fix the code and it requires a bit less enforcement IMHO.

kalm wrote:

ASUG8 wrote:If BofA is breaking IRS guidelines (which they likely are) then they deserve whatever penalties the IRS throws at them. Why isn't $4.4B of income with no taxes paid showing up as a red flag to the IRS? Are they busy chasing down the gross offenders that failed to report $100 in interest expense?

The IRS is tasked with interpretation and enforcement of tax law - no question BofA (like many companies) operates in the grey area of tax code and challenges the IRS to prove that their interpretation of tax codes is incorrect. It's a freakin' shell game, hiding earnings and assets to avoid taxation and as soon as Congress enacts a more restrictive code companies with the resources to do so will find ways around it.

I'm not saying it's illegal or that I wouldn't do the same in their shoes. But this whole concept of who's fleecing the system and hurting the average tax payers the most is a fucking farce. BTW, congressional conks want to make significant cuts to IRS enforcement. You know, to save the tax payers money.

Appaholic wrote:

kalm wrote:
I'm not saying it's illegal or that I wouldn't do the same in their shoes. But this whole concept of who's fleecing the system and hurting the average tax payers the most is a fucking farce. BTW, congressional conks want to make significant cuts to IRS enforcement. You know, to save the tax payers money.

Well, the IRS is tasked with intepretation & enforcement of US tax law as G8 stated. And yet, they can't figure out a way to make an organization pay income taxes on $4.4Bil of income. So really, why do we need the IRS at all? Sounds like IRS should be privatized in order for the taxpayer to get any kind of return on investment.....

ASUG8 wrote:

Appaholic wrote:
Well, the IRS is tasked with intepretation & enforcement of US tax law as G8 stated. And yet, they can't figure out a way to make an organization pay income taxes on $4.4Bil of income. So really, why do we need the IRS at all? Sounds like IRS should be privatized in order for the taxpayer to get any kind of return on investment.....

The IRS only has 106K employees - you could throw half their auditors at BofA for 6 months and maybe walk away with a few thousand bucks in successful resolutions of "interpretations" of tax law. Start investigating a multinational like Exxon and the difficulty expands exponentially. Massive corporations like this with a multitude of DBA's would completely overwhelm the IRS with an exhaustive audit. In these cases, size matters - I would gather that most IRS investigations only scratch the surface while the companies get away with murder.

ASUG8 wrote:

Appaholic wrote:
Well, the IRS is tasked with intepretation & enforcement of US tax law as G8 stated. And yet, they can't figure out a way to make an organization pay income taxes on $4.4Bil of income. So really, why do we need the IRS at all? Sounds like IRS should be privatized in order for the taxpayer to get any kind of return on investment.....

The IRS only has 106K employees - you could throw half their auditors at BofA for 6 months and maybe walk away with a few thousand bucks in successful resolutions of "interpretations" of tax law. Start investigating a multinational like Exxon and the difficulty expands exponentially. Massive corporations like this with a multitude of DBA's would completely overwhelm the IRS with an exhaustive audit. In these cases, size matters - I would gather that most IRS investigations only scratch the surface while the companies get away with murder.

ASUG8 wrote:

Appaholic wrote:
Well, the IRS is tasked with intepretation & enforcement of US tax law as G8 stated. And yet, they can't figure out a way to make an organization pay income taxes on $4.4Bil of income. So really, why do we need the IRS at all? Sounds like IRS should be privatized in order for the taxpayer to get any kind of return on investment.....

The IRS only has 106K employees - you could throw half their auditors at BofA for 6 months and maybe walk away with a few thousand bucks in successful resolutions of "interpretations" of tax law. Start investigating a multinational like Exxon and the difficulty expands exponentially. Massive corporations like this with a multitude of DBA's would completely overwhelm the IRS with an exhaustive audit. In these cases, size matters - I would gather that most IRS investigations only scratch the surface while the companies get away with murder.

BDKJMU wrote:

ASUG8 wrote:
The IRS only has 106K employees - you could throw half their auditors at BofA for 6 months and maybe walk away with a few thousand bucks in successful resolutions of "interpretations" of tax law. Start investigating a multinational like Exxon and the difficulty expands exponentially. Massive corporations like this with a multitude of DBA's would completely overwhelm the IRS with an exhaustive audit. In these cases, size matters - I would gather that most IRS investigations only scratch the surface while the companies get away with murder.

Its Congress's fault. They create a tax code thats over 7.5k pages or whatever it is long. If they scrapped it and went with a tax code that was a page or 2 long, everything would be simple to enforce, Americans and companies would save hundreds of billions a year in compliance costs. You wouldn't need 106k IRS employees, and companies wouldn't have to employee armies of CPAs and tax attorneys to try to beat the system. These people should be protesting Congress, not some corporations. And the only people I've heard who've called for scrapping the entire tax code have been Republicans, albeit probably a minority of them.

GannonFan wrote:

BDKJMU wrote:
Its Congress's fault. They create a tax code thats over 7.5k pages or whatever it is long. If they scrapped it and went with a tax code that was a page or 2 long, everything would be simple to enforce, Americans and companies would save hundreds of billions a year in compliance costs. You wouldn't need 106k IRS employees, and companies wouldn't have to employee armies of CPAs and tax attorneys to try to beat the system. These people should be protesting Congress, not some corporations. And the only people I've heard who've called for scrapping the entire tax code have been Republicans, albeit probably a minority of them.

I agree with this - the only way people get around things is by having it so complex that people with enough resources can figure out a loophole and then hide it from sight. Make the code simple and then everything gets clearer.

BDKJMU wrote:

ASUG8 wrote:
The IRS only has 106K employees - you could throw half their auditors at BofA for 6 months and maybe walk away with a few thousand bucks in successful resolutions of "interpretations" of tax law. Start investigating a multinational like Exxon and the difficulty expands exponentially. Massive corporations like this with a multitude of DBA's would completely overwhelm the IRS with an exhaustive audit. In these cases, size matters - I would gather that most IRS investigations only scratch the surface while the companies get away with murder.

Its Congress's fault. They create a tax code thats over 7.5k pages or whatever it is long. If they scrapped it and went with a tax code that was a page or 2 long, everything would be simple to enforce, Americans and companies would save hundreds of billions a year in compliance costs. You wouldn't need 106k IRS employees, and companies wouldn't have to employee armies of CPAs and tax attorneys to try to beat the system. These people should be protesting Congress, not some corporations. And the only people I've heard who've called for scrapping the entire tax code have been Republicans, albeit probably a minority of them.

dbackjon wrote:

BDKJMU wrote:
Its Congress's fault. They create a tax code thats over 7.5k pages or whatever it is long. If they scrapped it and went with a tax code that was a page or 2 long, everything would be simple to enforce, Americans and companies would save hundreds of billions a year in compliance costs. You wouldn't need 106k IRS employees, and companies wouldn't have to employee armies of CPAs and tax attorneys to try to beat the system. These people should be protesting Congress, not some corporations. And the only people I've heard who've called for scrapping the entire tax code have been Republicans, albeit probably a minority of them.

Kinda like the Bible/Quran/Mormon. If we just scrapped all of it, and just used the Golden Rule, billions of people would be better off.

dbackjon wrote:

BDKJMU wrote:
Its Congress's fault. They create a tax code thats over 7.5k pages or whatever it is long. If they scrapped it and went with a tax code that was a page or 2 long, everything would be simple to enforce, Americans and companies would save hundreds of billions a year in compliance costs. You wouldn't need 106k IRS employees, and companies wouldn't have to employee armies of CPAs and tax attorneys to try to beat the system. These people should be protesting Congress, not some corporations. And the only people I've heard who've called for scrapping the entire tax code have been Republicans, albeit probably a minority of them.

Kinda like the Bible/Quran/Mormon. If we just scrapped all of it, and just used the Golden Rule, billions of people would be better off.

Grizalltheway wrote:

ASUG8 wrote:
The IRS only has 106K employees - you could throw half their auditors at BofA for 6 months and maybe walk away with a few thousand bucks in successful resolutions of "interpretations" of tax law. Start investigating a multinational like Exxon and the difficulty expands exponentially. Massive corporations like this with a multitude of DBA's would completely overwhelm the IRS with an exhaustive audit. In these cases, size matters - I would gather that most IRS investigations only scratch the surface while the companies get away with murder.

Makes AZ's assertion that the government controls big companies all the more laughable.

AZGrizFan wrote:

Grizalltheway wrote:

Makes AZ's assertion that the government controls big companies all the more laughable.

Which is interesting, since I said big business controls government.

kalm wrote:

GannonFan wrote:
I agree with this - the only way people get around things is by having it so complex that people with enough resources can figure out a loophole and then hide it from sight. Make the code simple and then everything gets clearer.

+2. But this will not change with the current way campaigns are financed.

GannonFan wrote:

kalm wrote:
+2. But this will not change with the current way campaigns are financed.

But it's been like this for as long as we've been having campaigns. It's not like this is new. If you have a different way of financing campaigns I'm all ears.

kalm wrote:

GannonFan wrote:
But it's been like this for as long as we've been having campaigns. It's not like this is new. If you have a different way of financing campaigns I'm all ears.

We collected a lower percentage of taxes in 2009 than we have in 50 years. The financial services industry spent billions in the 90's to deregulate and and now that sector dominates our economy and our politics. Is manipulation of the political system through money new? Of course not. Has it gotten worse over the last decade, are we more monopolistic, have circumstances changed?

GannonFan wrote:

kalm wrote:
We collected a lower percentage of taxes in 2009 than we have in 50 years. The financial services industry spent billions in the 90's to deregulate and and now that sector dominates our economy and our politics. Is manipulation of the political system through money new? Of course not. Has it gotten worse over the last decade, are we more monopolistic, have circumstances changed?

How has it gotten worse? Your first line is silly, of course we collected a lower percentage of taxes in '09 than in the 50 years prior - funny how severe economic downturns have a way of limiting the income earned in the year of the downturn. But how have things gotten worse - seems like more of the same to me.