Tax dodgers are the unpatriotic Americans

The poignant moment at the recent Presidential debate came when Hillary Clinton noted that in the only two years in which Donald Trump’s tax returns were available, the Republican Presidential candidate paid no taxes.

Interrupting her arguments, Trump interjected, “That makes me smart.” He went on to suggest that “you would have squandered it,” transforming tax dodging into a patriotic act.

The veterans whose very survival depends upon benefits from the VA to Social Security might have a different viewpoint. What disturbs our editors is the growing corporate trend to enjoy the fruits of the American economy without putting tax dollars back to support the society underpinning it. Have we reached a point where a refusal to contribute expresses true patriotism, but non-violent acts of social protest betray the nation?

Corporate inversions, off-shoring funds, and ‘essential’ tax dodges are problems to which Trump himself says he holds answers, yet the GOP candidate seems not to comprehend that his personal attitude towards taxation is part of the problem. When you reason that refusing to pay taxes in any fashion constitutes a patriotic act, then the rest are details.

Which makes Donald Trump’s suggestion that San Francisco 49ers Quarterback Colin Kaepernick “find another country to call home” so galling. For which is less patriotic? To kneel as the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ plays in order to bring attention to the deaths of young African Americans, or to be a billionaire who refuses to tender any contribution to his fellow citizens’ health care, security, or veterans’ pay, equipment and benefits?

Truthfully, Trump is just a symptom. A psychosis has befallen our society when social protest betrays the social contract yet refusing to financially support that society somehow upholds its virtues—just as the government runs out of money to repair the infrastructure underpinning it.

Our editors do not begrudge the average businessperson legitimately utilizing deductions in his federal and state taxes to offset investments in productivity and personnel. If that lowers his tax liability, the monies, which he sowed into the economy, have advanced our domestic workforce, and therefore American society in general. Nor do we have a problem with the political discussion of whether the corporate tax rate ranks too high in comparison to other industrialized democracies, Arguing that America must remain economically competitive no more undermines our civic virtue than does kneeling at a football game.

What galls our Editorial Board is the assumption that any form of American taxation paid somehow constitutes a business—and therefore societal—betrayal. The so-called corporate inversions which have become all the rage, it must be remembered, began right here in the Crescent City. In 1982, New Orleans-based McDermott International shifted its legal addresses to low-tax Panama. Total corporate savings so far: at least $9.8 billion—money that otherwise would have gone to the U.S. government.

The irony came from the fact that a considerable percentage of McDermott’s domestic profits came from providing nuclear fuel to the US Navy. Nevertheless, paying a then-46 percent corporate tax on the $220 million the corporation held offshore seemed unseemly to McDermott’s management. The IRS fought this first corporate inversion until 1989, when the agency dropped the case, opening the floodgates of corporate off-shoring.

Moreover, despite McDermott’s promises that they only planned to move “a post office box,” with no effect on the company’s domestic operations, job losses followed, and not just out of New Orleans. Today, the company employs domestically only a fraction of the 40,000 it had in 1982. Yet, profits remain high, and offshore where this “American” corporation need never pay a dime.

So many have followed McDermott’s lead, companies that were nurtured here by U.S. law, citizenry, and often government contract, and then left for lower-taxed havens without a moment’s twinge of regret. It never occurs to these corporate managers that they have sold out their country as surely as if they took a bribe and defected?

While Colin Kaepernick’s gesture is mostly symbolic, tax dodgers and inverted corporations actually put veterans’ lives at risk in their refusal to contribute. Why haven’t we had an uprising over the latter? Why do the rights of tax dodgers and CEOs of corporations, and corporations themselves outweigh the rights of the Kaepernicks of the world, as well as the Black lives for which he speaks?

On the IRS headquarters are inscribed the words of a Republican, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” It would do well for Mr. Trump to remember that next time he criticizes Mr. Kaepernick.

This article originally published in the October 3, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.