New Posts

Feb 8, 2016

Top 400 Taxpayers See Tax Rates Rise, But There’s More to the Story

As Americans were gathering party supplies to greet the New Year, the Internal Revenue Service released their annual report of cumulative tax data reported on the 400 tax r...

read in full
Feb 4, 2016

Chlorine Bleach Plants Needlessly Endanger 63 Million Americans

Chlorine bleach plants across the U.S. put millions of Americans in danger of a chlorine gas release, a substance so toxic it has been used as a chemical weapon. Greenpeace’s new repo...

read in full
Jan 25, 2016

U.S. Industrial Facilities Reported Fewer Toxic Releases in 2014

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data for 2014 is now available. The good news: total toxic releases by reporting facilities decreased by nearly six percent from 2013 levels. Howe...

read in full
Jan 22, 2016

Methane Causes Climate Change. Here's How the President Plans to Cut Emissions by 40-45 Percent.

  UPDATE (Jan. 22, 2016): Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its proposed rule to reduce methane emissions...

read in full
more news

What the GOP’s Putting Under Corporate America’s Tree

This year-end tax package is a grab bag of gifts for corporations and a lump of coal for working families.

read in full

Treasury and IRS Make Inversions More Difficult

The Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) acted last week to make corporate inversions more difficult for companies looking to swap their American address for a lower tax rate.

Corporate inversions allow U.S. corporations to register as a foreign corporation in order to lower the taxes they owe. But the transaction occurs largely on paper— meaning the location of many of a company’s employees, the markets the company serves, and the products themselves are unlikely to change significantly.

read in full

Report: US Ranks as Third for Financial Secrecy

The Tax Justice Network has released the largest ever survey of global financial secrecy. The United States ranks third—only Switzerland (#1) and Hong Kong (#2) pose larger threats to financial transparency efforts, according to the index.

read in full

Let's Stop the Tax Cuts for Corporations Instead

How much would it cost to #StopTheCuts to all the non-defense programs threatened by sequestration next year? $37 billion. And even if the sequester is averted, funding for these programs would be at historically low levels, following years of reduced funding.

read in full

Developing Nations Push Corporations to Pay Their Fair Share

Developing nations gathered at the Third UN Conference on Financing for Development in Ethiopia earlier this month and pushed for a more equitable approach to taxes—they want corporations to pay their fair share and contribute to the well-being of the nations that benefit their bottom lines.

read in full

Proposal Would Block Inverted Companies from Receiving Government Contracts

Corporations that have reclassified themselves as “foreign-owned” received approximately $1 billion in federal contracts over the last five years. These companies profit from American tax dollars despite avoiding U.S. taxes themselves.

read in full

Offshore Tax Dodgers Jeopardize Long-Term Financial Health of American Small Businesses

Every small business would need to pay $3,244 in additional taxes to offset the $110 billion in federal and state revenue lost every year to offshore tax avoidance by multinational corporations, according to a new report from U.S. PIRG.

read in full

Lawmakers Push to Stop Tax Haven Abuse

On Jan. 13, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) introduced the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act. The bill would eliminate incentives for U.S. companies to shift jobs overseas, close offshore loopholes to ensure corporations are paying their fair share in taxes, and change rules on corporate inversions

read in full

End of the "Double Irish" Scheme Could Take a Bite Out of Apple's Tax Avoidance

Last May, many were shocked to hear that one of their favorite companies, Apple, was acting less than patriotically. The corporation was stashing profits out of the reach of the U.S. Treasury.

read in full

The Disappearing Corporate Tax Base: How to Reclaim Lost Tax Revenue to Rebuild State Budgets

American states and cities and the people who live in them are hurting. States and cities were ravaged by the Great Recession of 2007-2009. While the recession is officially over, its damage remains deeply felt in families and communities across America. More than 10 million Americans remain out of work, nearly half of them for more than six months. More than half a million state and local public jobs disappeared because of budget cuts and have not been refilled.

read in full

Pages

Resources & Research

Living in the Shadow of Danger: Poverty, Race, and Unequal Chemical Facility Hazards

People of color and people living in poverty, especially poor children of color, are significantly more likely...

read in full

A Tale of Two Retirements: One for CEOs and One for the Rest of Us

The 100 largest CEO retirement funds are worth a combined $4.9 billion, equal to the entire retirement account savings of 41 percent of American fam...

read in full
more resources