Posted on 04/02/2014 4:16:21 AM PDT by PaulCruz2016
WASHINGTON (AP) — Caterpillar Inc. executives defended a tax strategy Tuesday that has saved the manufacturing giant billions in U.S. taxes. They got support from Republican senators, including one who said the company deserves an award.
Caterpillar has avoided paying $2.4 billion in U.S. taxes since 2000 by shifting profits to a wholly-controlled affiliate in Switzerland, according to a report released by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. Levin chairs the Senate investigations subcommittee. On Tuesday, Levin grilled Caterpillar executives and their accountants at a hearing on the company's tax strategy.
"Caterpillar is an American success story that produces iconic industrial machines," Levin said. "But it is also a member of the corporate profit-shifting club that has transferred billions of dollars offshore to avoid paying U.S. taxes."
Julie Lagacy, a Caterpillar vice president, was adamant that the Peoria, Ill.-based manufacturer follows all tax laws. "We pay everything we owe," she told the subcommittee. Caterpillar got support from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who questioned why the subcommittee was even holding the hearing.
"I think rather than having an inquisition, we should probably bring Caterpillar here and give them an award," Paul said. "You know, they've been in business for over 100 years. It's not easy to stay in business."
Paul said Caterpillar and its accountants have an obligation to shareholders to minimize their taxes. "It is a requirement that you try to minimize your costs. So rather than chastising Caterpillar we should be complimenting them," Paul said.
(Excerpt) Read more at mail.com ...
It would put a bunch of bureaucrats out of business though.
Yep.
Making $$$ is immoral unless it comes from the government/taxpayers. That is what those Dems in Senate believe.
About as good a way to put it as anything. Somehow that kind of money is supposed to be virtuous in a way that free enterprise earnings are not!
Or to put it another way: If it's not a CAT it's a lapdog.
Bingo! Make it tax competitive and businesses would be back.
Sen. Paul is right. Business has a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders as well. Dem’s want to tax them into oblivion. Business finds a legal means to reduce costs.
Fix the tax structure. For all of us.
What people do, here, is get very nasty when they say, “he’s a conservative because he’s a conservative, and if you people would stop pointing out the vacuousness of his character, we could save the country, so get out of the way”
But the very question, and I’ll cut and paste it, is not answered.
‘...can tell me why he is considered a conservative.’
And yeah, sick, I’m sick of libs too, when they espouse such garbage.
The kind of being a brother’s keeper that the Lord wants is not called welfare at all! It is called P-R-I-V-A-T-E C-H-A-R-I-T-Y (our modern statist libs need it spelled out). Cat does a LOT of that. It isn’t just meowing.
And it can do more of it because it isn’t giving it to bureaucrats to take their hunk off the top before it ever goes to any needy parties.
Because Paul dares to look at a story of economic success and affirm it in spite of CAT’s excursion into other folly, he’s ipso facto evil and liberal. That’s the only way I can see what you say as meaning.
You know the old adage that when you’re up to your neck in alligators, it’s hard to remember that the objective was to drain the swamp?
Well Paul is saying damn the alligators, let us drain the swamp. That will also take care of the alligators, not so coincidentally. They won’t like it when the former swamp becomes dry.
Paul is the WISE conservative. The one who actually believes in bringing back the foundations rather than rearranging the Titanic’s deck chairs.
From a distance, it looks like everything is in place for that mutual success but the politics.
Hopefully, marxism has died there along with everything it killed and a Detroit and American renaissance could rise from marxism's ashes.
Where better for that to happen than Detroit?
To expand on libs beliefs on this(call it MSNBC 101):
$$$ made through private enterprise by private voluntary exchanges is immoral because they only care about making $$$ and so they don't pay their workers their fair share, and also they take advantage of consumers (us Americans) who cant be trusted to make their own decisions. And even if some of us can make good decisions that's not fair either.
Only the government who takes their and our $$$ though forced compulsion can be moral, but only if the right people are in charge, Obama, Hillary, Pelosi, Reid, Liz Warren....
because they will put fairness first.
So when they cant close businesses they must mandate them to slow death, so its fair.
It’s become a racket.
I briefly worked on a government project. I got kicked out because I was over-eager. Imagine giving the tax payers their money’s worth. What blasphemy.
The purpose of those jobs is to stimulate the economy, not to provide a useful product or service.
I guess I’m a hopeless idealist.
What does the word "conservative" mean to you and what characteristics are required for you to label a person as a "conservative"?
From the interviews I've heard, such as yesterday on Sean Hannity, he calls himself a "Constitutional conservative" and agreed with Hannity's self label of "Reagan conservative" and would accept that label as well.
Looking at Rand Paul's actions so far, to me "Constitutional conservative" fits better than the "libertarian" label others want to tag him with.
Just my humble opinion.
I’d like to have someone explain how Rand Paul is a conservative. I’m trying to see it, no one is helping me.
Some comment he made yesterday is supposed to do it
A comment made about a company which is helping, with their capital, to destroy a major cultural institution?
No
If the government rewarded workers for producing, we might end up back where white males got all the rewards, and that wasn’t fair.
That was white privilege.
The government rewards for fairness not results as it has few constraints on cost or consumer satisfaction as businesses do.
It can do the right thing.
Notice how mad the get when someone finds a way to “opt out” of their schemes as well.
Just tell your favorite lib acquaintance that you never intend to become part of Obamacare, and that you have strategies to avoid joining or paying the finetax/taxfine.
They get maaaa aaaad.
It’s time they started contributing to the GDP rather than working as parasites.
I guess you’d have to define “conservative” before we can compare Rand Paul to that standard.
I’d say Paul was a “minarchist”.
That not only means that the gov’t stays out of your wallet,
but also stays out of enforcing the moral direction of the country.
(I believe that the gov’t DOES have a role in the latter, BTW)
Businesses are getting led like sheeple into this disaster and it is widespread.
But one could cogently argue that with the small kind of government Paul wants, it wouldn’t be daring to institute novelties like this. And with the opportunity gone, so would be the temptation for short sighted business moves like this.
Anyhow can’t you get the point that it’s not about their having a spotless halo. It’s about doing the best for their stockholders. The more scarlet letters you snottily apply, the more permanent enemies you make.
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