MASSPIRG urges legislative committee to end the tax dodge
Testyfying before the Joint Committee on Revenue, today, MASSPIRG urged the committee to support An Act closing a corporate tax haven loophole, HB 2477 and SB 1524. The bill will reduce corporate tax avoidance through the use of offshore tax havens saving Massachusetts taxpayers $79 million a year while making the tax code fairer for ordinary taxpayers and small businesses.
An Act closing a corporate tax haven loophole, HB 2477 and SB 1524 was filed by Representative Josh Cutler (Duxbury) and Senator Mark Montigny (New Bedford) and cosponsored by a bipartisan group of 57 lawmakers. The bill, already a law in place in Oregon and Montana, also known as the “water’s edge” loophole would require that companies treat profits made in Massachusetts and funneled to known tax havens like the Cayman Islands as domestic taxable income. Making this change to the tax code would save Massachusetts taxpayers $79 million a year.
Many of America’s largest corporations use accounting tricks to shift profits made in America to offshore tax havens, where they pay little to no taxes. The U.S. corporate tax system allows companies to defer paying state and federal taxes on profits they earn abroad, until they declare the money has been brought back to the United States by paying dividends to shareholders, repurchasing stock, or making U.S. Investments. Many companies game this system using loopholes that let them disguise profits legitimately made in the U.S. as “foreign” profits earned by subsidiaries in offshore tax havens. The GAO found that at least 82 of the largest 100 publicly traded U.S. companies maintain subsidiaries in known tax havens.
By using offshore tax havens, multinationals avoid an estimated $90 billion in federal tax revenue each year. Because most state tax codes are so closely tethered to the federal one, states also lose billions in tax revenue from these loopholes annually. Based on an analysis of how much income is federally reported from each state, and on state tax rates, U.S. PIRG estimated that states cumulatively lost $26 billion in revenue last year as a result of multinational corporations abusing tax havens.
While much of the reform necessary to stop this tax haven abuse must happen at the federal level, states have begun to update their tax code to recapture some of the lost state revenue while making the tax code fairer and leveling the playing field for small businesses, which rarely use such loopholes.
Massachusetts can recapture some of the revenue lost to tax havens by treating income booked to corporate subsidiaries in known tax havens as domestic income for tax purposes. This option is readily available in Massachusetts because we have enacted combined reporting. Under combined reporting, passed in 2008, multistate companies report on their affiliates across the country. Information about the relative size of a company’s property, sales and payroll located in Massachusetts is already used in a formula to apportion the share of each company’s total domestic income that is subject to Massachusetts taxes.
Click here for the full testimony
http://www.masspirg.org/resources/map/testimony-close-shore-tax-haven-ma
Authors
Deirdre Cummings
Legislative Director, MASSPIRG
Deirdre runs MASSPIRG’s public health, consumer protection and tax and budget programs. Deirdre has led campaigns to improve public records law and require all state spending to be transparent and available on an easy-to-use website, close $400 million in corporate tax loopholes, protect the state’s retail sales laws to reduce overcharges and preserve price disclosures, reduce costs of health insurance and prescription drugs, and more. Deirdre also oversees a Consumer Action Center in Weymouth, Mass., which has mediated 17,000 complaints and returned $4 million to Massachusetts consumers since 1989. Deirdre currently resides in Maynard, Mass., with her family. Over the years she has visited all but one of the state's 351 towns — Gosnold.
