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Portland, OR - Oregon loses $175 million in tax revenue each year due to corporate tax avoidance, largely through abuse of offshore tax havens, according to a new report. The report by OSPIRG Foundation and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, “A Simple Fix for a $17 Billion Loophole,” comes as the state legislature convenes with eyes towards closing an estimated $623 million budget shortfall. According to the report, adopting worldwide combined report, or “Complete Reporting” would allow the state to recapture lost revenue from corporate tax avoidance, which would account for more than half of the anticipated shortfall in the 2019-2020 budget cycle.
Every year, corporations use complicated schemes to shift U.S. earnings to subsidiaries in offshore tax havens—countries with minimal or no taxes—in order to reduce their state and federal income tax liability by billions of dollars.
Meanwhile, smaller, wholly-domestic U.S. businesses cannot game the system in the same way. The result is that large multinational businesses compete on an uneven playing field, avoiding taxes that their small competitors must pay. Innovation in the marketplace is replaced by innovation in the tax code.
While we are glad that Fiat Chrysler is paying something for damaging the health of Americans and deceiving customers, this settlement does not go far enough. It neither ensures these violations of the public trust won’t happen again nor makes consumers whole.
McDonald's Commits to Reducing Medically Important Antibiotic Use in its Beef Supply Chain
Car seats are supposed to keep our youngest children safe. But though they may protect infants and toddlers during accidents, car seats have a history of containing toxic flame-retardant chemicals.
That’s finally changing.
Today, a coalition of groups including U.S. PIRG Education Fund and the Ecology Center’s “Healthy Stuff” program released test results on car seats in a new report, Hidden Hazards:Flame Retardants and PFAS in Children’s Car Seats. The authors collaborated with researchers from Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame.
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