Wells Fargo gets $18 billion tax subsidy as our schools close and folks lose their homes.

The federal income  tax rate for US corporations is 35%. But a study by Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, that looked at the tax records of 280 fortune 500 companies found that the average tax rate was a lot less than that.

Between 2008 and 2010, the average tax rate for these companies was 18.5%.  Although 71 companies paid over 30% of their profits in federal income tax, another 30 had negative tax rates in that period, the study finds.

Even worse, Pepco, an electricity company, according to the Economist Magazine, had the lowest effective tax rate of -57.6%.  Yes folks, minus 57.6%.  Wells Fargo, the giant bank received a big tax subsidy over the period studied, $18 billion. Wells Fargo, the Economist adds,  "Was one of 25 companies which took more than half of the total $223 billion subsidy claimed. In at least one of the three years, 78 firms paid no or negative tax rates, and legally-by writing off capital investments before they actually wear out (known as "accelerated depreciation"), making use of tax deductible stock options and industry-specific tax breaks, and offshore tax havens."

The banks of course control both the political parties in the US and have all the representatives in Congress who pass the laws that the briber's (Lobbyists) write.  Obama was just in Europe at the meeting of the G20 and he was representing the interests of US banks there. No one would oppose laws aimed at increasing taxes on the bankers and the other social parasites but the laws they pass for themselves as the loophole here shows, will always leave them an out. We pointed out in earlier blogs here  and here for example how all the attempts at restructuring the tax laws no matter how they're worded to stop loopholes or go after the corporations and the rich, they always end up increasing the contributions from the working class. When you think about it, the lottery is but a hidden tax on the working class that also props up a huge bureaucracy.  Here in California it was supposed to save our schools, the ones that they are closing down years later.

This example above is just a small example of where the money is; we just have to go after it as well as begin from a standpoint that there is no real economic crisis or shortage of money but a problem of the ownership of it and its allocation.  The banks and financial institutions have to be taken under public ownership (not our deposits) and the wealth we (the 99%) create allocated in a way that meets human and environmental needs and develops a secure and productive society.