Avoiding Taxes The Way Big Corporation Do

I'm interested in tax fairness. It doesn't seem fair to me that giant multi-national corporations, with their teams of lawyers, accountants, and lobbyists, are able to rig the game so they pay no income taxes despite significant profits.

By not paying their fair share, the burden on the rest of us increases while at the same time, our nation's financial outlook worsens as a result of what I believe to be both a spending and revenue problem.

Yesterday, I had an op-ed in The Hill, discussing this issue. The article was called Avoiding Taxes The Way Big Corporations Do where you can read more about my views and this issue.

The Willamette Week had a great article back in April entitled 9 Things The Rich Don't Want You to Know About Taxes where they highlighted the impact of corporate and individual loopholes that seem to be available to only an elite few.

Here's an older article claiming most corporations pay no US Income tax and here's a more recent article highlighting 16 profitable U.S. corporations who paid no income taxes.

B Corporation Community Grows

Last week I attended a local B-Corporation event at The Joinery. The B-Corp community keeps growing and now includes more than 420 business organizations representing more than $2 billion in annual revenues. Oregon has 27 B-Corps.

Four states (Maryland, Virginia, Vermont, and New Jersey) have now passed B-Corp legislation. New York is on the cusp, and bills have been introduced in over half the states. According to Stephanie Ryan from B Lab, the legislation has been passed with bipartisan, and nearly unanimous support, when the final vote was taken.

I still consider the B-Corp certification as the gold standard for green minded businesses due to the rigor, transparency, scope, vision, and accountability of the B-Corp certification mark.

B-Corp is launching version 3.0 of the assessment tool later this summer. I highly recommend that every business benchmark themselves using the free assessment tool. It will help you lead a better business.