Published 18 Apr, 2011
While you might have spent the weekend frantically rushing to finish your tax returns by today’s deadline, many of the mega-corporations that got us into the current financial mess probably spent that time counting their money and having a laugh at the rest of us. GE and tons of other corporations will have a tax bill for 2010 of ZERO. Hundreds of thousands of fellow Americans April 18, tax day, are standing up to say make them pay!
GE had $14.2 billion in profits in 2010. Yet they will contribute NOTHING to the federal government, while every last dime is soaked from us. Exxon Mobil, with earnings of more than $45 billion, is the world’s most profitable corporation. Yet in 2009, it was not liable for any taxes. They actually received a $156 million tax rebate!
Meanwhile, the right wing is on the attack: slashing public services, eliminating workers’ rights, and destroying jobs. Their excuse? “America is broke”—and yet big corporations and the wealthy are raking it in, and continue to get tax break after tax break. Something doesn’t add up.
America is not broke. The right wing wants to convince us we’re broke so that they can push through their radical agenda. And well-connected corporations continue to use their political power to dodge their taxes. In 2009, after helping crash the American economy, Bank of America paid $0 in taxes. Republicans want to give a $50 billion tax bailout to big oil companies—and at the same time take away food aid to hungry pregnant women and children. This is immoral and un-American.
Enough is enough! On Tax Day, April 18, as millions of Americans patriotically pay their taxes, unions, progressive, environmentalists and middle class families are calling on corporations and millionaires to pay their fair share. At hundreds of events from coast to coast, people are presenting tax bills to corporate tax dodgers for the billions of dollars their legions of lobbyists helped them avoid. Workers, students and middle class Americans organized a peaceful, dignified, and powerful day of action to call on corporations to pay their fair share and demand that elected leaders make them pay.
In front of the Whitehouse, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spoke before 10,000 young environmental activists and unionists who were protesting the tax giveaways to huge corporations who pollute the environment and exploit workers. Trumka told the crowd that young people and the labor movement need to keep building power to stop the handouts to the wealthy and instead shift the focus to creating good green jobs and a better future.
It’s time to demand that everyone pays their fair share to rebuild the American Dream. Everyone facing cuts or cutbacks, a pink slip or a shrinking paycheck—is invited to join in.