Unless you made a shitload of money I highly doubt your effective rate was 40%. The rate on the last x% of your money might have been taxed at 40% but most places have a progressive tax structure. Deductions should lower the effective rate further.
Yeah, my combined marginal federal and state rates are like 33%, my effective rate after mortgage interest and charitable deductions was like 8-9%. I'm going to try to be more like Google though.... ;)
Is it not the case that as money moves around the economy from one person to another it is taxed over and over again many times? Why do some people only think of capital gains as "double taxation"?
As the article points out they have an obligation to maximise profits. If there was a way to cut your tax rate from 20%+ to less than 5% and they didn't use it, it would be a breach of their duties.
It's amusing to see how effective industry lobbyists have been in shutting down any reform that would close these loopholes. Lets talk about slashing entitlements but completely stonewall any attempts to get corporations paying more tax...
I've got an obligation to maximize profits too: an obligation to support my family. But I don't have the resources Google does to set up complex income shifting tax avoidance schemes, and for that I'm heavily penalized by paying a much larger share of my income in taxes than a company like Google does.
If these big companies want to have the rights and privileges that citizens do (treated as legal entities, freedom of speech through political contributions, etc) then they should have to play by the same rules and with the same encumbrances.
But individuals do take advantage of tax loopholes. What you are talking about is that entities with more money have more options on how to minimise the amount they give to the government.
