Courier News: MoveOn protests tax inequity
media mention6:20 AM, Apr. 18, 2012
Written by Bob Makin
Staff Writer
CENTRAL JERSEY — Nearly two dozen MoveOn members participated in the organization’s Tax the 1% National Day of Action at a bank in New Brunswick and at post offices in Flemington and Mendham on Tuesday.
Regional organizer Mary Stevens said the protests in front of the post offices were to let people know that some of the federal taxes they were filing were going to corporate tax breaks rather than infrastructure, higher education and other government efforts.
At the Wells Fargo branch on Albany Street, Stevens presented management with a fake federal tax bill of $4.8 billion, about a 35 percent tax on $23.6 billion in 2011 profits.
“We’re here because Wells Fargo does not pay a penny of corporate taxes,” Stevens said. “Not only that, but our tax dollars have paid them $18 billion in the last three years. That’s not TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) money. That’s tax deductions, tax exclusions and tax exemptions. That’s the tax law.”
The claim that Wells Fargo has not paid its fair share of taxes is not true, said Kevin Friedlander, said Wells Fargo’s Northeast communications manager.
“Over the past 10 years Wells Fargo has paid more than $33 billion in federal and state corporate income taxes, including nearly $4 billion for 2011,” Friedlander said in an email.
Wells Fargo’s $17.96 billion in federal tax breaks was the largest among Fortune 500 companies during the past three years, according to the 2011 report “Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers 2008-10,” which was jointly issued by Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, both based in Washington.
During the same time period, more than $160 billion in federal tax breaks were given to 30 Fortune 500 companies, the report said.
About 500 MoveOn protests were conducted nationwide in front of the offices of several corporations, as well as at post offices and congressional offices, Stevens said.
“The corporations and the wealthy have jury-rigged the tax code so that they benefit at the expense of the rest of us,” she said. “We pay for their cushy lifestyles. MoveOn is focusing on this gross tax inequity.
“It’s really highway robbery the way the corporations get away with not paying taxes and, in fact, getting subsidies from us,” Stevens continued. “That money could go for jobs, highways and bridges, higher education. We need that money.”
Ashante Patterson, a Rutgers University junior from Plainfield, was one of more than about 100 passers-by given MoveOn fliers about tax inequities in front of Wells Fargo. Patterson was headed to the university’s College Avenue Campus, where a coinciding weeklong student protest called Tent State cried for reforms to make college more affordable.
When presented with a flyer about tax inequity, Patterson said: “I would love to have that money to pay back my college loans. I had to take out loans because my parents make just a little bit too much money to qualify for financial aid. I don’t know how I’m going to pay the loans back.”
Corporations often say they need tax breaks in order to create more jobs. Yet during the three-year period that fostered $160 billion in federal tax breaks among 30 Fortune 500 companies, jobs were lost, Stevens said, including 2,000 positions eliminated by Wells Fargo.
“It’s only in the last three years under (President Barack) Obama that there have been slight job gains,” she said. “There were heavier job losses under (President George W.) Bush from ’07 to ’08, and they continued into the beginning of the Obama administration, but under the last couple of years under Obama, there have been increases in employment.”
The “Buffett Rule,” a federal legislative proposal inspired by a charge led by billionaire Warren Buffett to tax the rich more heavily, has been derailed in the Senate despite slight Democratic control, Stevens said. Buffett pays a lower federal tax rate than his secretary, she added.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney pays a 13.9 percent federal tax rate on millions of dollars of annual income, which is less than the 17 percent average reported by the Internal Revenue Service, Stevens said.
“He should be paying three times that amount with all the money that he has.
“The Democrats have tried to get the Buffett Rule through the Senate …” Stevens continued. “It’s not something Obama can do because it’s a legislative issue. Obama can only propose legislation. There are bills that have been introduced that the Republicans aren’t moving on.”
Stevens was joined at Wells Fargo by about a half-dozen fellow senior activists who handed out fliers about tax inequities. They included Sid Madison, 69, of Piscataway.
“A lot of it is not illegal,” Madison said. “It’s legal, but it’s really corrupting the system because the corporations just have too much access. It’s really odd because, when you think about it, the financial system worked well between the end of the ’30s and the ’80s, then they started changing things, and we had the savings-and-loan debacle that cost a couple of billion dollars.”
Stevens credited the Occupy movement for publicizing the 1 percent of the population that owns 99 percent of the wealth. She said MoveOn will be working with Occupy activists on several upcoming events, including shareholder actions.
Occupy members will participate in a protest of the Johnson & Johnson shareholder meeting on April 26 at the Hyatt Regency New Brunswick. Stevens said she didn’t know if MoveOn would participate in that.