It's good to be a big company. Middle America is about to get clobbered with higher taxes to pay for a health care reform that won't reform anything but Google's clever income shifting helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries.
U.S. corporate income-tax rates are 35 percent and, despite claims that European taxes are 'higher', the U.K., Google’s second-biggest market by revenue, is 28 percent. What does it tell you? Corporate taxes are too darn high, that's what, and they have loopholes that keep tens of thousands of IRS people employed but don't really have much in the way of fairness.
Maybe their corporate motto should change from “don’t be evil” to "don't pay taxes so poor people can get medicial care".
Sure, taxpayers may expect a little something back, since the National Science Foundation paid for the research behind Google and also Sergei Brin's scholarship, but I bet he would just give them back a few thousand dollars and keep that stock market value of $194.2 billion in return.
Don't get all smug about Apple either, iPhone sycophants, The Steve does the exact same thing at his company.
