I mean you singular, not you plural. Because that's what the average taxpayer is ante-ing up every year to help corporations out. Mitt Romney, who may be the competition's candidate in 2012, is the one who put his hand in your pocket.
Think Progress has the story.
... While Romney often cites closing corporate tax loopholes in Massachusetts to balance the state’s budget as among his biggest successes, he simultaneously owes some of his personal wealth to the fact that the company he helped start took advantage of offshore tax havens to shield investors from having to pay American taxes. (Romney was the wealthiest of all presidential candidates in 2008, boasting a personal fortune of nearly $250 million and spending $45 million of his own money during the 2008 primary.) ...
The LA Times reported on this during the run-up to the 2008 election. It noted -- and Think Progress emphasizes -- that although Romney himself got no personal tax benefits from the deal, "the tax-friendly jurisdictions helped attract billions of additional investment dollars to Romney’s former company, Bain Capital, and thus boosted profits for Romney and his partners."
Bain Capital is a company Mitt Romney set up in the mid-1980's. Bain Capital works as an agent for corporations, setting up shell corporations in the islands that would allow those corporations' investors "to avoid the 35 percent corporate tax rate they would have to pay in the U.S., leaving more revenues for executive compensation."
Again, Think Progress:
... Offshore tax havens are legal and often result in financial windfalls for businesses, CEOs, and investors. But they’re harmful for American taxpayers. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group estimates that the U.S. government loses $100 billion a year in tax revenue due to these tax havens. Because American businesses and taxpayers have to make up the lost revenue, the costs trickle down, costing individual taxpayers an estimated $500 annually.
Romney started using offshore tax havens in 1984. That's 27 years' worth of $500 bills saved under the average taxpayer's mattress would mean more than $13,000 in your pocket right now. A lot more if you had invested the money. Another way of looking at it is what the US Treasury might be sitting on right now if it had saved $100 a year for 27+ years. That would come to two trillion seven hundred billion dollars. It could have been ours.
Or, a fund for corporate donors to rightwing political causes.
