By Sarah Anderson, Scott Klinger, Javier Rojo
A new report by IPS and Campaign for America's Future shows that America’s top CEOs are pocketing massive taxpayer subsidies at the same time they’re pushing austerity cutbacks in government programs that benefit ordinary citizens.
REPORT KEY FINDINGS
Thanks to a “performance pay” tax loophole, large corporations in the United States today are routinely deducting enormous executive payouts from their income taxes. In effect, these companies are exploiting the U.S. tax code to send taxpayers the bill for the huge rewards they’re doling out to their top executives.
- During the three-year period 2009-2011, the 90 publicly held corporate members of the austerity-focused “Fix the Debt” lobby group shoveled out $6.3 billion in pay to their CEOs and next three highest-paid executives.
- These 90 Fix the Debt member firms raked in at least $953 million — and as much as $1.6 billion — from the “performance pay” loophole between 2009-2011. The exact full value of corporate windfalls from this loophole will remain impossible to compute until we have more complete mandated disclosure for executive compensation.
- Top executives at these same Fix the Debt companies are aggressively advocating cuts to government programs that benefit the ordinary American taxpayers subsidizing their compensation. Many of these executives have also added to America’s debt and deficit by using tax havens and other accounting tricks to have their corporations avoid paying their fair tax share.
- Health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group enjoyed the biggest taxpayer subsidy for its CEO pay largesse. The nation’s largest HMO paid CEO Stephen Hemsley $199 million in total compensation between 2009 and 2011. Of this, at least $194 million went for fully deductible “performance pay.” That works out to a $68 million taxpayer subsidy to UnitedHealth Group – just for one individual CEO’s pay. A just-released proxy reveals that Hemsley pocketed another $28 million in “performance pay” in 2012, which computes into a tax break for UnitedHealth of nearly $10 million.
- Discovery Communications stood next in line for a government handout. Between 2009 and 2011, CEO David Zaslav pocketed $114 million, $105 million of this in exercised stock options and other fully deductible “performance pay.” That translates into a $37 million taxpayer subsidy for Discovery and its lavish executive pay policies. In 2012, Zaslav hauled in enough additional “performance pay” to generate a tax break worth $9 million.
And here you thought it was all about "fair market value".
ReplyDeleteAnd here I thought it was a non partisan article until I looked up your source.
ReplyDeletesorry lou I look for information everywhere. And again my sources are reporting while yours keep quiet about the fucking of the American middle class. Put your head back in the sand.
DeleteAbolish the IRS. Abolish bailouts.
ReplyDeleteProblem solved. Next?
The bailouts worked for the banks, investment firms, Wall Street and auto manufacturers. They were a dismal failure for the citizens who lost their jobs and homes. We are still in a recession after all these years, with no real end in sight. Is the economy improving? Yes. Is it where it should be? Absolutely not. Abolish the IRS and you abolish the Federal Government, a Libertarian's dream.
ReplyDeleteAbolish the IRS is the vernacular term for change the tax code. The Feds would still be alive, but their petty punitive political power and "subsidies" for the rich would not exist.
DeleteAnd why should anyone benefit from a bailout? There was a sequence of events that led to the necessity of the bailout. That's the process where real capitalism weeds out the riff raff. Bailouts prevent that from happening.