Financial Privacy & Security News

Closing Loophole Will Shift $1.7 Billion Off Colorado Taxpayers Backs 

Primary contact: Danny Katz, 608-215-0929

Denver – As last-minute taxpayers flocked to the Post Office to file their returns, a new report released today highlighted major US corporations avoid as much as $100 billion a year in federal taxes by hiding profits in foreign countries.  According to the CoPIRG report, released in coalition with Colorado ACORN and 114 other organizations, this loophole results in over $1.7 billion in additional tax burden for taxpayers here in Colorado.  

The coalition called on Congress to restore fairness to the tax code by putting an end to offshore tax havens for Corporate America as proposed in President Barack Obama’s budget plan.   

“President Obama wants to fix a tax code that has been carved and twisted by banks and corporations,” said Danny Katz, Director of CoPIRG. “Today should be the last Tax Day when high-priced accountants and secret post office boxes are valued over hard work and accountability.”

In coordination with the report release, CoPIRG emailed thousands of their members, inviting them to guess which corporations on a list of 10 did not have an offshore tax haven.  The results were surprising.  Over 80 percent of the largest companies in the US hide profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens. The companies include American Express, A.I.G, Boeing, Cisco, Dow, Hewlett-Packard, J.P. Morgan Chase and Pfizer.  In fact, over 18,000 U.S. companies currently maintain a post office box in one five story building in the Cayman Islands to take advantage of the loophole.

Those who participated were urged to contact Congress and encourage support for Obama’s budget plan.  Obama’s budget proposal, which is working its way towards final passage in the Congress, recommends closing this outrageous loophole and giving additional tax relief to middle-class taxpayers. 

“The weight of these tax-dodgers is being carried by the rest of us and it is simply unfair,” Ben Hanna, Colorado ACORN’s State Head Organizer, added, “The President’s budget plan fully turns the page on the failed policies of the past by ending wasteful corporate handouts and investing instead in important priorities that were shortchanged in the past. We simply cannot make an economy that works for everyone without restoring fairness to the tax code, fixing our broken health care system, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and investing in tomorrow’s educated workforce. And that’s what the President’s budget is all about.”

Read the full report here.

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CoPIRG is a statewide, non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy organization. For more information visit www.copirg.org. 

Colorado ACORN is a community organization of 10,000 low- and moderate-income member-families.  Our priorities include: better housing for first time homebuyers and tenants, living wages for low-wage workers, more investment in our communities from banks and governments, and better public schools. ACORN is an acronym, and each letter should be capitalized.  ACORN stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.  ACORN's website is at http://www.acorn.org.