Monday, August 22, 2011

Multinational Scamma Jamma: Lobby for Tax Breaks/Hide the Foreign Employment Numbers

To hell with the tax breaks.
Companies hire when they think they can make a profit on the labor. Period.
And they don't need taxpayer money to do it.
There is a deeper problem in the taxation of labor vs. capital and a still deeper problem: there is no need for the skills and abilities that millions of people bring to the table.

From the Washington Post:
Corporations pushing for job-creation tax breaks shield U.S.-vs.-abroad hiring data
Some of the country’s best-known multi­national corporations closely guard a number they don’t want anyone to know: the breakdown between their jobs here and abroad.

So secretive are these companies that they hand the figure over to government statisticians on the condition that officials will release only an aggregate number. The latest data show that multinationals cut 2.9 million jobs in the United States and added 2.4 million overseas between 2000 and 2009.

Some of the same companies that do not report their jobs breakdown, including Apple and Pfizer, are pushing lawmakers to cut their tax bills in the name of job creation in the United States.

But experts say that without details on which companies are contributing to job growth and which are not, policymakers risk flying blind as they try to jump-start the hiring of American workers.

“It’s an important piece of information that the American people should have,” said Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. “Should you listen to the kind of advice these companies have about how to grow the economy when their record and their model indicates they’ve cut jobs? . . . Or should we talk to people who actually do create jobs in the United States?”...MORE
HT: MarketBeat
Much as I make fun of Immelt, at least GE breaks the numbers out.