Legal Doesn't Make it Right - Jack Blum
01-24-2012
Jack Blum, Chair of Tax Justice Network USA, is a longtime friend of the Hannah Arendt Center. He participated in the Center's 2009 Conference, The Burden of Our Times: The Intellectual Origins of the Financial Crisis. One of the national experts on tax evasion, Jack recently collaborated on the film, "We're Not Broke," in which he helps shed light on the tax system in the United States. We reached out Jack to shed some light on Mitt Romney's tax returns for 2010-2011. We found him at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah where he is promoting "We're Not Broke," and he agreed to share with us his thoughts.
Mitt Romney’s tax returns show us just how rotten the American tax system has become. He is right when he says that his returns are correct and that he followed the law – but what a law! His work allowed him to call his salary a “carried interest.” Under current tax law he can to decide when to take the income, and when he decides to declare it, to pay tax on that income at the capital gains rate of 15%.
Making matters worse, his line of business, venture capital, relies in large part on tax breaks. Venture capitalists more often than not buy their target companies on borrowed money. They convert the capital in the target business from equity to debt and take deductions for interest payments on the debt. Capital is after tax money – debt is before tax and thus tax favored. Call it capitalism without real capital.
All of this is perfectly legal, but that doesn’t make it right. After all, slavery was legal for hundreds of years. So was preventing women from participating in the political process.
Beyond the case of venture capital, the tax code is riddled with privileges for the few, and for the multi-national corporations. Senator Carl Levin D-Mich. Has just introduced legislation that tries to close many of the most egregious loopholes. But, he is not on the tax writing Finance Committee, and that Committee is looking at ways to make the situation worse, not better.
The question every citizen should ask is how the Internal Revenue Code got this way. Certainly a government prepared to cut the budget for education, research, and infrastructure should be looking at the way it is subsidizing “free market” financial engineering business activity – activity that is usually not terribly productive. The answer lies in the campaign finance system. Seats on the tax-writing committees are the most coveted in Congress because the members are showered with contributions from lobbyists, political action committees, and employees of corporations wanting favors.
As a result, it should come as no surprise that many of the largest corporations have a negative tax rate.
The latest insult to the political system is the Citizens United decision that gives corporations the right to contribute to political campaigns. Corporations are not people. They are not citizens. They will invert one of the slogans the country was founded on. The new slogan will be “representation without taxation.”
Mitt Romney thinks that what he has done to take advantage of the loopholes without comment on the inherent injustice is normal and justifiable.
It does not seem to occur to him that the tax code that made him rich has shifted the burden of providing for the funding the common good to average citizens who are being told that they should expect nothing from government.
Finally, the people who are most favored by the tax system are the leaders and funders of the incessant drumbeat that social security and Medicare are bankrupting the country. The Mitt Romney’s of the world who make their money from “carried interest” don’t pay social security and Medicare taxes and won’t need the benefits.
The debate over the economy and the budget must include corporate tax subsidies. America cannot provide for its needs if the likes of Google, Apple, and Pfizer pay no tax. It cannot provide for its needs if the very rich can turn real income into capital gains and time their decision on when to take the income. The silence on this subject is deafening.