The mill of the gods grinds slowly, they say, but it grinds exceeding small. In Washington, something very like the mill of the gods is the GAO (Government Accountability Office), whose anonymous researchers crank out facts about nearly everything the government does.
Without opprobrious adjectives, the GAO just publishes facts and numbers with a droll combination of fearless frankness and resolute neutrality ("average cost of can opener for base kitchen in Kibangistan, $150," a report might say, its language primly denuded of words like "exorbitant" or "outrageous").
Among the data uncorked by the agency over the last month: two-thirds of corporations in the U.S. paid no federal income tax from 1998 through 2005. The GAO didn't say that was shameless; that verbal grenade was left to be thrown by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), who together with Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) had requested the study.
Some 1.2 million American companies and 38,000 foreign corporations—68 percent of foreign firms doing business in the U.S—managed to figure their taxes out so as to claim they owed the government nothing, according to Internal Revenue Service documents combed by the GAO. And these weren't just tiny Mom-and Pop operations. A quarter of the American companies each had $50 million in receipts, or assets worth $250 million or more. The combined sales of the U.S. and foreign firms totaled $2.5 trillion.
The GAO didn't identify the companies or explain what rationales they used to avoid paying taxes except to say that in some cases the nonpayment was due to operating losses or tax credits.
The nonpayment of taxes by corporations is especially worrying with the country's finances compromised by an expensive war and a softening economy. Over the last 30 years, more and more large businesses have avoided paying taxes and shifted their participation in the national life to using money to influence politicians through donations and lobbying (since 2000, the number of registered lobbyists in Washington has more than doubled). In a word—why pay taxes when you can buy politicians?"
