Well, fair is fair. Anyway, it wouldn't be polite to call these companies out and ask them to pay their share of the burden when they are busy cutting job benefits along with jobs while giving even more to CEOs.
Tax and accounting loopholes that largely benefit rich taxpayers and companies cost the U.S. government $20 billion a year even as the pay gap between chief executives and employees has widened, two groups said on Monday.
The biggest loss comes from a "stock option accounting double standard" that allows corporations paying executives stock options to deduct more than their actual expenses, they said.
For example, when UnitedHealth Group Inc paid CEO William McGuire 9 million stock options, it put on its financial statement that the compensation cost the company nothing, according to the Institute for Policy Studies and the group United for a Fair Economy.
But it claimed a tax deduction of $317.7 million, the groups said.
That practice alone costs the U.S. government $10 billion a year, the groups said.
A practice known as deferred compensation -- which allows executives to defer an unlimited amount of pay -- costs the government $80.6 million a year, while other loopholes bring the total lost tax revenue to $20 billion, the groups said.
