A coalition partner of GAP's International program – Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) – co-released a study earlier today that profiled 280 of our country's most profitable companies, and found that 78 paid no federal income tax in at least one of the last three years.
GAP and CTJ are both members of the FACT (Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency) Coalition because of common ground in international anti-corruption work. Many corporations and wealthy American citizens escape taxes by parking assets abroad, often illegally. Once privately-owned assets have been moved to "secrecy" jurisdictions (e.g. the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands) they are very hard to trace and tax.
One notable whistleblower who exposed such financial malfeasance is Bradley Birkenfeld, who revealed schemes involving financial services behemoth UBS (out of Switzerland) and approximately 52,000 wealthy corporate and individual US taxpayers.
This new report was co-released by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The study is online here.
Bea Edwards is Executive Director at the Government Accountability Project, the nation's leading whistleblower protection and advocacy organization.
