WMC Fact Check: Corporate Taxes
WMC Fact Check
Corporate Taxes: Giving Your Money to Their Clients
The self-described mission of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce is to create “meaningful, well paying jobs [to provide] economic security and dignity to Wisconsin citizens. A strong economy provides the tax base necessary to support government’s role in education, building infrastructure, protecting the environment, and caring for the needy.”
Does the lofty rhetoric meet the reality?
One Wisconsin Now’s WMC Watch has compiled a series of reports to fact check the many fictions advocated by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. Consider the following when WMC uses its network of resources and subservient elected officials to advocate for more corporate tax breaks, less funds for education, inaction in the face of skyrocketing health care costs.
WMC Fact Check: Corporate Taxes
- Corporate tax breaks have shifted tax burden to homeowners. A series of exemptions for business property over the last 30 years has shifted the property tax burden from businesses to homeowners, who pay nearly 70 percent of all property taxes today. [Source: Institute for Wisconsin’s Future, 1/05/08]
- Eleven of WMC Board Member Businesses Paid No Corporate Income Taxes in 2003, 2004. Of the 25 companies in which corporate executives sat on WMC’s Board in 2003 and 2004, 11 paid no corporate income tax to Wisconsin. These include: Ariens, Associated Banc-Corp, Emerson, Greenheck Fan, Hutchinson Technologies, Market & Johnson, Serigraph, Snap-On, Manitowoc Company, Wausau Paper, and Webcrafters. This extends to national corporations operating in-state. In 2005, Microsoft, Merck, and Sears earned a combined $18 billion in profits – but paid absolutely nothing in Wisconsin corporate income tax. [Source: Institute for Wisconsin’s Future, 12/07/07]
- Nearly All Corporations Pay Less Than Five Percent Tax Rate. The Government Accountability Office reported in 2004 that 94 percent of major corporations paid at a less than 5 percent tax rate. This puts corporate taxation at the second-lowest level in 60 years. Rampant under-reporting of profits leaves many corporations paying nothing in taxes. [Source: Government Accountability Office, 2/04/08]
- WMC Claims of Wisconsin as ‘Corporate Tax Hell’ a Fallacy. WMC and its conservative allies have claimed Wisconsin is a “tax hell” to justify policies that erode public spending in favor of corporate tax breaks. In 1982, corporations in Wisconsin paid 85 percent of profits earned, but less than 20 years later, that had plummeted to just 33 percent. [Source: Associated Press; WaxingAmerica.com, 3/20/06]
Examining WMC’s legislative positions, one might ask exactly what WMC’s definition of “government’s role” actually is. When it comes to government overseeing a fair redistribution of shared tax dollars, protecting water, air and open spaces and particularly, “caring for the needy,” the role of government, appears to be in WMC’s opinion corporate rights before individual liberties and profit before people.
Ensuring the interests of working families, seniors, children and people in every corner of Wisconsin come before the narrow special interests at Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce requires your action. You can make a difference and protect the priorities we share.
Visit the WMC Watch action center for more information about the steps you can take to counter the WMC agenda.
