Companies in the Fix the Debt coalition, which advocates for federal austerity policies, qualified for $1 billion or more in tax breaks tied to executive pay packages from 2009 to 2011, according to a new report by the liberal think tanks Institute for Policy Studies and Campaign for America's Future....
Fix the Debt is one of several austerity advocacy groups tied to Wall Street billionaire Peter Peterson, who started a think tank devoted to deficit reduction in 2008 and has bankrolled multiple public relations campaigns on the issue.
A total of 125 CEOs are officially members of the coalition, including CEOs of 90 public companies. The IPS-CAF report only examined tax perks for public companies in the coalition. The same CEO pay loophole is available to private companies, but private firms do not have to disclose executive pay to the SEC.
The coalition urges a host of spending cuts and tax reforms, including benefit cuts for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as a means to reduce the federal budget deficit. A spokesman for the group told HuffPost that while the group doesn't advocate for specific policies, it does insist that comprehensive tax reform be part of any debt deal.
The CEO pay loophole being used by Fix the Debt companies is extremely popular in corporate America. According to a report by Citizens for Tax Justice, Fortune 500 companies skipped out on $11.2 billion in taxes in 2011 alone thanks to this loophole.
"The stock option loophole is a major reason why corporations are paying record-low federal income tax rates," said Matthew Gardner, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. "The worst of it is that there is no 'cost' to a corporation that uses stock options to pay its executives, so there's no justification for allowing them to deduct it as an expense. It's not an expense."The Huffington Post
Executive Pay Of Austerity Advocates Saves Companies More Than $1 Billion Via Tax Loophole
Zach Carter
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