EDITION
HOUSING SPECIAL
April 27, 2016
O PINION
Page 9
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Shady Shell Companies and Tax Havens
Panama Papers
reveal abuses
m auriCe r ahming
It is hard to believe
that the second easiest
place in the world to run
a shady, anonymous,
and often criminal cor-
poration is right here
in the United States.
According to a recent academic
study, the United States is second
only to Kenya for harboring these
shell companies used to launder
money and skirt their taxes.
Much like the classic sleight of
hand game, companies across the
country, including many here in
Oregon, are shifting and shufling
ownership and holdings until we
lose track of who or where they
are.
Criminal organizations regu-
larly set up shell companies to
launder ill-gotten revenues and
fund their criminal enterprise. In
the case of multi-national corpo-
rations, however, what they are
doing is not illegal. That doesn’t
mean there aren’t victims, though.
The elaborate game of deception
corporations play costs the aver-
age taxpayer nearly $1,500 annu-
ally, close to $4,000 if you own a
small business. They shift, they
shufle, and we pick up the tab.
This month’s leak of the Pana-
by
ma Papers revealed more than 11
million documents from a Pan-
amanian legal team showing the
actual devastating toll anonymous
shell companies take on the
world, signally a time for
U.S. action.
Our own Senator Ron
Wyden has commented on
the paper’s release and says
he will open an inquiry
into the tax evasion issues
revealed. While we applaud his
efforts, this issue can’t be tackled
alone. The Main Street Alliance,
and our national coalition partners
at FACT (Financial Accountabil-
ity and Corporate Transparency)
call on Senator Merkley and our
representatives in Congress to not
only look into the criminal avoid-
ance of taxes but to develop a head
on approach.
We are calling on our members
of Congress to pass a law to stop
the creation of anonymous shell
companies that facilitate crimes,
of which everyday Americans
are the victim, and call these tax
avoiding multinational corpora-
tions what they are, criminals.
America shouldn’t he one of the
easiest places in the world to form
these companies; we can’t afford
to be.
Roughly 100 media outlets col-
laborated on the “Panama Papers”
investigation, and they have be-
gun publishing a series of stories
based on documents leaked from
the prominent Panama-based law
irm Mossack Fonseca. Many of
these secretly owned companies
exposed in the papers operate in
Nevada or Wyoming, but recent
reporting from the Portland Busi-
ness Journal suggest that Oregon
is not far off.
These states act as getaway
cars for money launderers, terror-
ist, and corporate tax evaders, and
it is time to take away the keys.
Requiring the collection and pub-
lication of information on who
owns and controls these compa-
nies would make it much harder to
launder dirty money and leave the
rest of us safer.
Small business owners across
the country and our coalition
partners urge the House Ways &
Means Committee to eliminate the
offshore tax loopholes abused by
wealthy individuals and multina-
tional companies to avoid paying
taxes that then must be made up
by individual citizens and small
businesses, to the tune of $150
billion a year.
Some of the biggest companies
in the country–Apple, Pizer, Wal-
Mart and, of course, Nike… just
to name a few—shift their proits
offshore to a network of foreign
subsidiaries in countries known
for their abnormally low corporate
tax rates. Use of such systems al-
lows 358 of the largest 500 mul-
tinational companies in the U.S.
to avoid paying their fair share in
taxes.
Likewise, offshore tax haven
secrecy enables wealthy Ameri-
cans to secretly hide their wealth
abroad, away from tax authori-
ties—sticking the rest of us with
the tab. The Stop Tax Haven
Abuse Act—currently pending
in both the House and Senate—
would end the ability of wealthy
individuals to cheat on their taxes
while simultaneously putting an
end to the ability of the biggest
companies in the world to indei-
nitely defer paying the taxes that
they owe.
Companies based and operat-
ing in this country beneit from
our education system, roads and
bridges, national defense and le-
gal systems and are obligated
to support them through taxes.
Corporate taxes as a share of fed-
eral tax revenue has slipped to 8
percent in recent years, far lower
than the share paid by individual
Americans. When companies pay
little or nothing, the rest of us—
including small and other local
businesses—pay more. It’s time
to tell multinational corporations,
wherever they are, to pay what
you owe.
Maurice Rahming, co-owner
of O’Neill Electric in Portland,
Oregon and member of the Main
Street Alliance of Oregon
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