Tax Games Corporations Play

As you watch the debate on corporate taxes, keep your eye on economic reality. Every year US multinationals duck about $100 billion in taxes by shifting jobs and operations overseas, and that raises the tax bill for the rest of us here at home.

Business leaders complain that their tax burden is too heavy, but business taxes have been coming down for six decades. Back in the 1950s, corporations used to pay 32% of total US tax revenues. Today it's down to 7%

Almost no major American corporation pays the official tax rate of 21%. The average real tax rate for Fortune 500 companies is 11.3% - just half the official rate, according to one study. Last year, 55 large U.S. corporations like Nike FedEx, Duke Energy, Nucor, and four dozen others paid ZERO TAXES on $45 billion in reported profits.

Joe Biden wants to blow the whistle and force U.S. multinationals to pay their fair share of taxes by imposing a 15% corporate minimum tax, regardless of where American companies make their profits, at home or overseas. No more zero taxes, says Biden: "It's fair. It's honest. and it gives us what we need" to build a better future for working Americans.