Peoria has tied its economic future to Caterpillar Inc. for over a century. The corporation made several Top 10 lists in recent months. Here are two of them:
Truth-out.org:
Corporations: Sure We Don’t Pay Our Taxes, But We Want Tax Relief Anyway
Tax avoidance is reaching new levels of hypocrisy. Caterpillar, which complained that government failure to spend on infrastructure impedes its business, is recognized as a leading avoider of the federal taxes that could pay for infrastructure.
Rolling Stone:
Some of America’s top corporations are parking profits overseas and ducking hundreds of billions in taxes. And how’s Congress responding? It’s rewarding them for ripping us off
According to an analysis by Audit Analytics, top tax avoiders and how much money they have parked overseas, inaccessible to the IRS:
Giants from high-tech (Microsoft, $76 billion); Big Pharma (Pfizer, $69 billion); Big Oil (ExxonMobil, $47 billion); investment banks (Goldman Sachs, $22 billion); Big Tobacco (Philip Morris, $20 billion); discount retailers (Wal-Mart, $19 billion); fast-food chains (McDonald’s, $16 billion); and heavy machinery (Caterpillar, $17 billion). General Electric has $110 billion stashed offshore, and enjoys an effective tax rate of 4 percent – 31 points lower than its statutory obligation to the IRS.