Big Profits, Tiny Taxes || Part 1
Originally published Nov. 13, 2019
EBay Inc., the online auction company with 180 million buyers around the world, earned $34 million of profit in Florida in 2014, according to state auditors.
At Florida’s official corporate income tax rate of 5.5 percent, eBay should have paid more than $1.8 million in state taxes -- enough money to hire 40 new teachers.
But records show eBay actually paid $18,810 -- not even enough to hire one.
It’s not an isolated example. Auditors say Sanofi Pasteur Inc., one of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers, earned an estimated $55 million of profits in Florida between 2008 and 2013 -- yet it didn’t pay a dime in state income tax over that same period.
In recent years, Mastercard Inc. saved more than $20 million in Florida income taxes by claiming that none of its sales occur in Florida. Verizon Wireless saved more than $23 million by passing hundreds of millions of dollars of profits out of the state. And HCA Healthcare Inc. saved more than $28 million in large part by moving money through a maze of subsidiaries.
All of these moves are made possible by two things: Aggressive tax-avoidance tactics by big businesses -- and elected leaders who choose not to stop them.
The combination has left Florida with what national experts say is one of the easiest-to-avoid corporate income taxes in the nation. An estimated 99 percent of all businesses in Florida no longer pay any corporate income tax at all.
“The Florida corporate income tax leaks like a sieve,” said Richard Pomp, a law professor at the University of Connecticut and a leading authority on state taxes. “Business has it pretty much the way they want it.”
Read the rests of the story here.
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