The Illinois Payroll Tax Scam

by Dick Mac

OK: I get it about reducing the tax burden of the wealthy and all the corporations. OK: I get it. I don't agree, but a majority of the right-wing media believe this, and it's their opinion that counts.

Corporate taxes have been deeply reduced in the past ten years. Tea-baggers will tell you it's not true, but corporations pay almost no tax on their profits. One of the arguments made by anti-tax proponents is that we double tax corporations by taxing their profits and then taxing the dividends that shareholders received when remaining profits are distributed.

This argument, though theoretically sensible, no longer has any validity because as corporate profits have sky-rocketed and the salaries of chiefs and directors have soared, dividend payments have been woefully stagnant. There is no double taxation if the profits aren't distributed!

Now we have learned that companies no longer paying taxes are receiving huge welfare payments. So, not only aren't they helping to support our society, they are actually sucking off the middle class, not the wealthy. You see, the wealthy pay a much lower percentage of their income than the rest of us.

Not being satisfied with bankrupting our Treasury and stealing as much as they can, the tea-baggers at the State level have figured out another way to give corporations huge amounts of our money.

Not bailouts.

Not tax-breaks.

Not corporate subsidies.

The State of Illinois is now giving our payroll taxes directly to the largest corporations in that State.

When State taxes are withheld from your paycheck, they are sent to the State to run the government. When it's time to tally-up, money is sometimes returned to the taxpayer, because the amount withheld was greater then the amount required.

The largest corporations in Illinois now withhold your payroll taxes and keep them for themselves.

So, not only have we drastically cut corporate tax and drastically increased corporate welfare, we are now giving our tax dollars directly to the corporations right out of our paychecks.

I know that "conservatives" and tea-baggers hate America's government (which means they hate themselves), and we've been told for thirty years by every president since Reagan that reduced taxes will lead to a smaller government and a smaller government will result in reduced taxes.

What is happening, however, is that our taxes continue to go up, government services are reduced (in the case of Illinois, the State is completely removed from any direct relationship with its taxpayers), and corporations are taking more of the taxes paid by the citizenry.

This is not good.

If we want to reduce the government, then reduce the government, but don't just give our taxes to corporations who already pay no taxes!

Take a minute-and-a-half to watch this video by Reuters correspondent David Cay Johnston:



See, also:

Paying taxes your employer keeps-David Cay Johnston

Link to the video

Thanks to Jane for the heads-up.


Dead Enz
Kyle G. Brixton