[Mavdog]

[quote]
Originally posted by: kg_veteran

Apparently you only read the portions of the article you wanted to read. Sure, it discusses how the Heinz Corp might benefit, but it also discusses why the author believes that Kerry's tax proposal is problematic. For example:

Under current law, they can locate production and profits abroad and avoid paying the very high U.S. taxes by letting profits sit in bank accounts overseas. This strategy does not avoid foreign taxes, but since those are much lower than ours, the playing field is leveled somewhat. A U.S. manufacturer can produce a good in Ireland for sale in Europe and be competitive despite our high tax rates.

Senator Kerry plans to end this. If a multinational makes money abroad, it must pay U.S. taxes immediately. This will make the negative impact of high U.S. taxes impossible to avoid and force U.S. firms to significantly increase prices. That should lead to sharp reductions in market share and employment both at home and abroad, and a likely wave of foreign acquisitions of U.S. companies. The plan's second measure, a 1.75 percent reduction in the corporate tax rate on all worldwide profits, would not begin to offset the lost benefit of tax deferral.

Under current law all these foreign profits are subject to taxation when returned to the US. They don't "avoid" paying the tax, they defer. They don't leave the profit forever, what good would that be?
The doomsday scenario for US business is laughable.
The Kerry proposal is for a 5% not 1.75% as mentioned above.
Other than that...

or that Kerry's proposal will encourage these mutinationals to return their foreign earnings to domestic operations.

How does taxing ALL earnings encourage the multinationals to return the earnings to domestic operations?

see above

This article does not tell us what is in Theresa Heinz's trust and if she gets $ from Heinz Corp.

You're right, it doesn't. But a quick search of the Internet tells us that she IS a stockholder in Heinz Corp...

Heinz is the widow of the late Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania, who was heir to the $640 million Heinz food fortune. (John Heinz and Wirth were old friends in the Senate, and co-authored Project '88, a detailed manifesto of free-trade environmentalism.) Teresa Heinz,
a ruling class Portuguese woman who is a sort of green version of Ariana Huffington, remains a leading stockholder in the Heinz Corp., which owns StarKist, the world's largest tuna processor. -- 12-6-95 -- The Shameless Seven Ride Again

1995? Anyway, I don't know what assets she has, Heinz is 67% owned by institutions and funds, the trust is not listed in any filings. Of course, there are perhaps tens of thousand s of stockholders in heinz Corp.

Second, the "$33 million tax break" isn't a tax break, it is what the writer assumes the market value of Heinz Corp. would be affected

Can you refute his calculations? I realize that he makes assumptions (albeit reasonable ones), but do you think his numbers are wrong?

It wasn't a question of the "calculations", you incorrectly said "His wife has to give him an allowance out of that $33 million tax break", it's not a tax break.

What's amazing is the phrase "Kerry's wife's company" which it is not. Theresa Heinz doesn't own Heinz Corp[/i]

See above.

see above. She doesn't.

and from all we know Theresa Heinz doesn't receive a dime from Heinz Corp. as she gets benefits from a family trust set up for her deceased husband. Amazing that you can't grasp that.[/i]

See above.

see above.

So that is a reason to not mention the proposal and how it might increase tax collections by the US Government? Nice attempt to avoid the subject BTW.[/i]

The general thrust of the article is that increasing taxation of American multinational corporations hurts their ability to compete in the global marketplace. Something you have yet to refute.

It refutes itself as the article is incorrect in its premise that the US cos. "avoid" rather than defer taxes. Kerry's proposal says "Under John Kerry's plan, more than 99 percent of taxpaying companies will see their taxes go down."

Is that the point? I didn't criticize Halliburton nor Cheney for their severance agreement, that's for stockholders to do.

Sure you did. You said it was dishonest to criticize Kerry for legislation that might benefit Heinz Co. and NOT criticize Cheney for receiving his severance package from Halliburton.

Yes, the portion of the package that pays him today I guess I am criticizing. My above was in regard to the payment when he left the co.

He is employed by the US Government to be VP, he should NOT be receiving any compensation from a government contractor while in the employment of the US Government, and especially from a contractor who received over $4B in no-bid contracts from the US Government.

So what should he do? Refuse the money that he earned BEFORE he became Vice-President? There's a BIG difference between receiving something you earned beforehand and what you're implying.

He can defer the payment, that's simple to do. There is NO difference in the fact Halliburton is seeking work from the government that will be part of its revenues to pay the VP.

[My point is NOT that they should "cease operations until Cheney leaves office", they can do business with the US Goverment...just don't be paying the VP while he is in office. Pretty simple concept actually. It's called "Conflict of Interests".

It's not a conflict of interest unless the amount he's being paid changes based upon an award of contracts to Halliburton and/or you can show that he's the one giving the contracts to Halliburton.

No, the monies Halliburton gets from the government are part of the monies going to the VP. These government contracts also help Halliburton stay profitable. That's a clear conflict.

The totals I've read say that 25% of taxfilers had dividend income. It is fair to conclude that at least if not more than 1 in 4 people could see a benefit from the Kerry corporate tax proposals either from their tax obligations being reduced, their employment status or their investment returns.

How is it fair to assume that? You haven't established that anyone will receive a benefit from Kerry's plan. You haven't even talked about the plan. All you've done is quibbled over whether the writer of the article had a bias or not and unsuccessfully tried to nitpick the facts stated in his article.

For a guy who is constantly criticizing the opinions of others, you sure don't back your own opinions up with any facts.

I didn't pen a piece purporting to discuss a tax proposal put forth by the presumed demo candidate, merely saw a hatchet job and by showing what the plan actually says (the "facts" BTW) exposed the poorly conceives article for what it was- wrong in its premise and full of inaccuracies, not even mentioning the fact the article implied the tax policy was influenced by selfish motives.