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Two-thirds of all U.S. corporations don’t pay federal income tax. And this kind of tax dodging is going on in many parts of the world. Throw in the super-rich individual tax dodgers, and the amount of money involved makes up much or all of the difference between prosperity and the misery of apparently endless cuts to services for the middle and lower classes.
Only one thing has worked: the strategy of UKUncut. Starting last year, they created demonstrations focused on just one message: make them pay their fair share. (You can read the whole story, marvelously told, in Yes Magazine ('The UK’s Progressive Tea Party," by Johann Hari, February 8, 2011.) Public participation was tremendous; the movement mushroomed. Eventually even the conservative media had to back it, and the government had to start audits and announce they were clamping down on the tax cheats. Public discourse on the cuts in services had done an about-face.
Since the word got out, new Uncuts have started up in Canada, Australia, Ireland, France, and a little more than a month ago, USUncut launched into action with demonstrations against tax-dodging banks in 50 American cities.
As Hari says, "The UKUncut message was simple: If you want to sell (or do business) in our country, you pay our taxes. They are the membership fee for a civilized society." The secret of their success was to stay absolutely on message: the relationship between the cuts in public services and the amount this tax dodger should have paid. US Uncut has found that even conservative voters - individuals or small businesses – have joined up. They don’t want to make up in their taxes and lost services for what others flagrantly resisted paying.
The strategy is to target one big tax offender at a time.
Our event is sponsored by both MoveOn (Mark is a co-chair of our Jefferson County council) and USUncut (our event is listed with them, and we’ve been organizing it with their considerable advice and support). Our Tax Day event will be part of about 300 MoveOn events and a big Tax Day weekend of USUncut demonstrations (the two organizations have worked together on some events).
This new international and national movement comes to Port Townsend for the first time on Tax Day. Please help us.
Monday, April 18, at noon at The park at Water and Adams Streets, across the street from BofA. Please bring: Signs, banners, as many people as you can. The program will include peeches, demonstrations, music, street theater, public education (A few of us will go into BofA very peacefully for a symbolic demonstration)
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A few facts about the corporate "person", Bank of America:
BofA is the largest bank and the fifth largest corporation in America, holding more than $2.2 trillion is assets. In 2009 their pretax income was $4.4 billion. They were given $45 billion in taxpayer bailout funds in 2008 and 2009. By hiding their huge profits in 115 offshore accounts (many of them in the Cayman Islands), they paid ZERO federal income tax in 2008 and 2009, and they have a carryover loss of nearly a billion dollars to use in future years. You and I and every other taxpayer owe them this money.
Feel free to use any or all of this document as you wish.
Thanks for whatever you’ll do.
Carol Gallup
Secretary, Jefferson County Council, MoveOn
For more reading see:
Adam O'Daniel in the Charlotte Business Journal
Bank Of America Paid Nothing In Federal Income Taxes .. by Zaid Jilani in the Think Progress Blog.
YouTube video of BofA demonstration
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