Thanks to our friends at Good Jobs First, we can name three Illinois corporate tax loopholes that, if closed, would generate $1.5 billion in revenue over three years.  These changes alone won’t solve our revenue crisis, but they will go along way towards alleviating the pain of severe budget cuts.

No one likes talking tax policy, but we desperately need to shine the light on these loopholes: a thorough exploration renders them indefensible.  So take a deep breath and dive in.

Decouple from Federal Tax Policy

Just like your adjusted gross income from your personal federal income tax return determines your taxable income in Illinois, Illinois corporate tax code is “coupled” with federal corporate tax code.  There are two specific couplings that are costing us more than $1 billion in revenue over three years: accelerated depreciation on capital investments and the deduction for domestic production.

The accelerated depreciation enacted by the federal government is designed to encourage capital investment by allowing companies to write off new equipment immediately rather than over its expected lifespan.  “Forgoing revenue in the short term to help stimulate the economy is possible for the federal government because it is allowed to run a deficit,” says the Good Jobs First report.  “But for the states, with their balanced-budget requirements, such revenue loss during a recession would only force deeper budget cuts.”

Twenty-five of the 44 states that tax corporate income have decoupled from federal policy. Of those states that are still coupled, Illinois loses the most revenue.  We must decouple now.  There is no time to loose!

End Corporate Skimming of Sales Tax Revenue

Illinois lets retailers keep a portion (1.75%) of the sales tax you and I pay on every purchase!  Perhaps this made sense when enacted in the era before electronic cash registers and software designed to automatically track and remit payment to the state, but Illinois currently loses more than $110 million per year to this loophole.  Wal-Mart alone kept nearly $10 million of sales tax paid by Illinoisans.

Single Sales Factor

Single what?  This tax policy allows corporations to calculate their tax liabilities based only on their in-state sales and omits their payroll and property from the calculation. Imagine you run Company X, and Company X has 40% of its payroll and 40% of its property in Illinois, but only 4% of its sales.  Under the old formula for calculating corporate tax liability in Illinois (percentage of payroll + percentage of property + percentage of sales divided by 3), Company X would pay taxes on 28% of its profit.  Under Single Sales Factor, Company X now pays taxes on a mere 4% of its profit. This is unfair because Company X relies on our roads, airports and other Illinois infrastructure to conduct its business, and Company X’s employees use Illinois schools, hospitals and the other social goods.

Single Sales Factor benefits large corporations like Abbot Labs, Caterpillar and Motorola who have large operations in the state, but whose in-state sales are small relative to sales nation-wide.  The business lobby argues that Single Sales Factor is necessary to create and retain jobs, but in fact, the nine companies that lobbied for Single Sales Factor or were reported to have been its biggest beneficiaries have laid off more than 12,000 workers since 1999.

In a state starving for revenue, these loopholes are low hanging fruit.  Illinois is losing more money than any other state on these 3 antiquated loopholes.  But there’s more…

Cease and Desist from Company Specific Tax Breaks

Illinois must stop submitting to corporate blackmail like that of Sears and CME Group.  It’s kind of like negotiating with terrorists, an ugly business that just encourages more kidnappings.  I guess you could say that Sears and CME group are our latest corporate terrorists.

One of the first signs that a corporation is likely to disinvest (to scale back production to or lay off workers) is an appeal for tax breaks. Companies that obsess about tax rates rather than focusing on their customers and growing their market share are focusing on the wrong thing!

Sears is the prime example of this behavior.  Back in 1989, Sears got a $178 million subsidy to move their operations from downtown to Hoffman Estates, and since then they’ve done nothing but lose customers.  Just this past December, eleven days after Illinois granted Sears another $275 million in property and income tax breaks, they announced the closure of 100 stores nationwide.  There have been 12 major layoffs at Sears’ Illinois locations since 1999, including 100 on Thursday, February 16, totaling 2,497 workers laid off.  Sears was given $275 million in tax breaks – the only condition being that they not to fire more than one-third of their 6,100 workers.  Clearly, Illinois taxpayers are subsidizing Sears’ revenues as a cushion to the abysmal failure of their business model. We say let them walk, and invest the $275 million in public works and investments that will actually create jobs and improve the state’s overall attractiveness!

Company’s decisions about where to locate involve many complex factors.  Numerous studies show that taxation is rarely a significant factor in location decisions. All state and local taxes combined come to 1.2 percent of a company’s cost structure.  Instead of tinkering around the edges of what draws business, state government should focus on the 98.8 percent: state of the art infrastructure, great schools, relevant worker training programs and public safety.

If we accept that corporations are people, we must ask ourselves: what kind of people act like this?  Do we want to be their friends?  Do we want them to have power in our lives?  We would banish from our lives any actual person that acted this selfish and greedy. But in Illinois and in America, we let them set the terms of the debate, write the laws and enrich themselves at our expense.

Austerity Not The Answer

It is time to reject this completely flawed and discredited model of “trickle down” economics and replace it with one that understands the importance of a healthy public sector that sustains a strong physical infrastructure, invests in actual human-person education and health and forces “corporate-persons” to do their fair share in maintaining the society from which they derive great benefit. Every cut of 1% of the Illinois budget results in more than 6300 jobs lost for Illinois workers and perpetuates the vicious downward cycle. We should look to the America of FDR as a model and not to current day Greece.

Great Research

But don’t take our word for it… Read the Good Jobs First report “Closing Corporate Loopholes, Bolstering Illinois’ Budget”.  Check out their blog posts on Sears: Job Blackmail Pays, Job Blackmail: An Early Warning Sign of Job Loss, and Now Come the (Penalty-Free) Headquarters Layoffs.

Governor Quinn’s advance press played up closing corporate loopholes in a big way. He announced closing an oil company loophole for $75 million (that’s great—we agree) but nothing else except having his staff talking to legislative leaders.  A study released by our coalition Make Wall Street Pay Illinois and our ally Good Jobs First  proposed 3 loopholes worth $1.5 billion as a just a start.

If this is the Governor’s response to corporate responsibilities it is really quite pitiful. His budget: Lots of cuts. No revenues. Working people pay. Jobs will be lost. Corporations will not be required to pay their fair share.

More commentary and analysis to come as we read the full address.

Illinois has a structural deficit, that is, it has more costs than it has revenues to cover them.  It is not a spending problem, it is a revenue problem. But the only solution we’re likely to hear from Governor Quinn is cuts, including cuts to vital services for the poor and most vulnerable populations of our state: sick people, homeless people, people with disabilities, but not a demand for corporations in Illinois to pay their fair share of taxes. This is morally corrupt and indefensible.

Sears CEO, Lou D’Ambrosio makes a $1million annual salary plus $6 million in stocks, $2 million in bonuses and he flies around in a private corporate jet. His company received $275 million in tax giveaways from the State of Illinois, money that must be made up by Illinois working taxpayers and clients of its human services. After that huge gift from Illinois taxpayers, Sears demonstrated both its appreciation to Illinois taxpayers and the validity of trickle down economics by firing 100 workers at its Hoffman Estates headquarters and announcing the closure of more than 100 stores. If this is what is meant by corporate personhood, then the person known as Sears is a greedy, selfish sociopath. And our elected officials must stop enabling them from robbing the rest of us blind.

Yesterday, Make Wall Street Pay Illinois, of which IIRON is a member, released a study prepared by Good Jobs First, a leading think tank that studies corporate taxation, subsidies and employment practices.  The study found that closing 3 corporate tax loopholes would raise $1.5 billion for the Illinois state budget. We are demanding that Governor Quinn put these 3 policies into his budget plan. This is just a very good start toward solving our budget woes. Many other tax breaks and subsidies are given to corporations under the guise of job creation. There must be a thorough review of these programs and a claw back of all those lacking results, beginning with Sears who has just taken our money and actually shed jobs.

A study recently released by Make Wall Street Pay Illinois, ”The Cost of Cuts” showed that Illinois loses 6,230 jobs for every 1% reduction in its budget expenditures. If the Governor announces 9% spending reductions in each department of government as expected, that could mean up to 56,000 jobs lost in Illinois. That’s equivalent to firing every worker in Decatur or Waukegan. You cannot cut your way out of a recession as Spain and Greece have painfully learned.  The proposed cuts that we will be hearing from Governor Quinn on Wednesday will only deepen the cycle of job loss, shrinking tax base and more cuts. It is truly a vicious cycle.

A third recent study by Thinkprogress.org shows that over decades there is a constant inverse relationship between cutting corporate tax rates and economic growth. This idea of low corporate taxation and jobs is a powerful myth that drives our economic narrative and our political discourse, but is grounded in a blind faith against all evidence of fact. It persists because it serves the wealthy and powerful whose greed is insatiable and whose influence over our government has become dominant.  Working people, taxpayers, and the poor have virtually no voice in Springfield anymore, being drown out by the sound of money evidenced by the omnipresence of lobbyists and the mother’s milk of campaign contributions. Vey possibly, only a revolt of the 99%, one that actually begins to throw large numbers of the bums out, will break through the rule of the 1% and big money over our state government.

But it is never too late for repentance, and this is the season of Lent. A budget is a moral document. Governor Quinn, be a good Catholic and give up corporate welfare and the rule of the plutocracy as your Lenten discipline. After those 6 weeks you might find you really can live without it after all. Hopefully soon, if we organize ourselves, no elected official will be able to survive with it for much longer.

Please sign our petition for revenues and against cuts at makewallstreetpayillinois.org.

“Back in the 1950s, when the top marginal tax rate was more than 90 percent, real annual growth averaged more than 4 percent. During the last eight years, when the top marginal rate was just 35 percent, real growth was less than half that. Altogether, in years when the top marginal rate was lower than 39.6 percent — the top rate during the 1990s — annual real growth averaged 2.1 percent. In years when the rate was 39.6 percent or higher, real growth averaged 3.8 percent. The pattern is the same regardless of threshold. Take 50 percent, for example. Growth in years when the tax rate was less than 50 percent averaged 2.7 percent. In years with tax rates at or more than 50 percent, growth was 3.7 percent.”

Here is a link to the study:

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/06/20/249061/chart-taxes-economic-growth/

Hence, today’s poll question:

IIRON affiliate, the Northwest Indiana Federation of Interfaith Organizations added Gary Mayor, Karen Freeman-Wilson as a key ally today in its fight to ensure that federally funded projects train and hire local residents.  The Federation is advancing a Community Benefits Agreement styled after the Alameda Corridor CBA and is targeting the Regional Development Authority which administers federal dollars for projects such as the expansion of the Gary Airport. The CBA would ensure that local residents from disparaged zip codes in the region, including Gary, would receive 30% of all person hours worked on these projects and would establish a direct training to job pipeline to ensure the agreements success.

Mayor  Freeman-Wilson signed on to the Federation’s CBA campaign at a meeting today with key Federation leaders and some of her top level staff.  In addition, talks were initiated for the Federation to work with the Mayor’s Office to  create a “Gary Model” for training, hiring and advancing careers for local residents and supporting local contractors for all publicly funded projects.

As a result of this meeting, the Federation called off an action on the Board of Works for Wednesday February 15th,and  instead will be sending a delegation to receive project hiring data and acknowledging the partnership with the Mayor’s office.

“Sold Out” is the only way to describe the 50 state mortgage fraud settlement announced today.  Banks flooded the market with easy, predatory credit which drove up housing prices around the country.  Banks made huge amounts of money on mortgage related fees and even more money by bundling these loans and selling them as investments.  As the economy weakened and homeowners began to default, these investments became worthless, real estate values plummeted and Great Recession gripped the nation.  In addition to millions of foreclosures, current homeowners are collectively $300 billion underwater, and workers and retirees lost large portions of their life savings.

The settlement of $25 billion is a tiny fraction of the damage these banks – Bank of America Corp, Wells Fargo & Co, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup Inc and Ally Financial Inc. – did to the economy.   It is a gross miscarriage of justice at the expense millions of homeowners and working people.

For homeowners who were defrauded and lost their homes, $1,800 is way too little, too late.   It is a paltry down payment toward full relief for homeowners.

If ever there was any question of whether our elected officials serve the 1% and do not care about the rest of us, this “settlement” should serve as the settlement to that question.  Banks Got Bailed Out, We Got Sold Out part II is worse than part  I because everyone had plenty of time to fully understand the nature of the bank fraud and resulting damages, and yet our elected officials completely sold out the people again to their Wall Street friends. It is hard to imagine going into a voting booth in November and having anyone to vote for that hasn’t already made it clear they are devoted only to Wall Street’s interest and not ours. This settlement may well signal the complete takeover of our democracy by the corporate plutocracy.

Despite its deep flaws, the settlement announced today is stronger than it would have otherwise been because of grassroots groups who fought hard to bring more relief to homeowners and make sure that any settlement does not allow the banks to avoid accountability for fraudulent activity not yet investigated.  Due to our work and the work of our many allies in National Peoples Action and the New Bottom Line, momentum is building toward broad-scale relief for homeowners.

This fight is not over. The Obama Administration needs to make sure that its task force goes the distance and delivers at least $336 billion in principal reduction on underwater mortgages and $50 billion in restitution for affected homeowners.  If today’s settlement is any indication, this national task force investigation will also be a complete fraud, letting banks off scott free.

What happens next is critical. This is the President’s chance to show he escape the firm grip of Wall Street and become a champion for the 99%.

Those of us who have been fighting for bank accountability and principal reduction were somewhat heartened by the President’s strong statements about a full investigation of fraud in his recent State of the Union address. We welcomed the naming of New York Attorney General Eric Shneiderman to the federal task force.  Shneiderman has resisted heavy pressure and remained a champion for real bank accountability thus far. But if this robo-signing settlement is a harbinger of what will happen with this investigation, we are in big trouble.

Studies show that homeowners are collectively $350 billion underwater on their mortgages (not counting losses to commercial real estate concerns and housing speculators). This has got to be the absolute bottom line damages in this fraud investigation and it has to be passed on to the families who have suffered as a result of Wall Street bank fraud. This is the minimal consequences to the Wall Street banks that created then burst the housing bubble, crashed the global economy and sent families into a downward spiral of misery, foreclosure, lost wealth and savings, bankruptcy, homelessness and driven their communities into blight. This $350 billion number only represents direct loss of home value and not corollary economic dislocations, unemployment and other costs.

IIRON, our national network, National Peoples Action and the national New Bottom Line coalition are calling on the attorney’s general to hold out for real relief for aggrieved homeowners including ample principal reduction and we are calling on the Obama administration to quickly and aggressively pursue the banks in this investigation. To date, a shoplifter or petti thief has a much greater chance of doing time than any of the criminals who intentionally crashed the entire global economy. There is absolutely no moral defense to the failure to hold these brazen criminals accountable.

What you can do:

Sign our petition to Lisa Madigan on this website and call her office and tell her not to accept a weak robo-singing settlement.  312-814-3000.

Also, call the White House at 202 456-1111 and insist on a full and adequate investigation of mortgage fraud that results in criminal charges and secures a minimum of $350 billion for principal write downs.

For a good article from firedoglake click here.

From the New Bottom Line, here is what economists are saying about mortgage principal reduction:

More and More Economists Agree:

Reducing Principal is Key to Addressing the Housing Crisis

“There needs to be a recognition that many borrowers will never make the required payments on their underwater mortgages, and that the owners of these mortgages have already lost any meaningful chance of obtaining a full recovery of the outstanding principal.  The sooner that this reality is recognized and addressed, the sooner a recovery can take hold.  As such, an aggressive principal reduction program is necessary.”

•            Neil Barofsky, former Special Inspector General for TARP (Oct. 5, 2011) (www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-barofsky/foreclosures-mortgage-crisis-_b_995922.html?page=3)

“Most economists see principal reductions as central to preventing foreclosures. … Perhaps the cost to taxpayers could be reduced by giving the government—or even private investors—some of the upside when house prices finally start climbing.  One encouraging sign is that settlement talks between the government and the five biggest mortgage servicers (Ally Financial Inc., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., and Wells Fargo & Co.) are reportedly coming around, at last, to principal reductions.”

• Alan Blinder, former Vice Chairman at the Federal Reserve (Oct. 20, 2011) (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204485304576640983793571772.html)

“In this environment, principal reductions that restore some equity for the homeowner may be a relatively more effective means of avoiding delinquency and foreclosure. … [A]s I have noted, when the mortgage is ‘under water,’ a reduction in principal may increase the expected payoff by reducing the risk of default and foreclosure. … In my view, we could also reduce preventable foreclosures if investors acting in their own self interests were to permit servicers to write down the mortgage liabilities of borrowers.”

•            Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Chairman (Mar. 4, 2008) (www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20080304a.htm)

“Surely there is a strong case for experimentation, with principal-reduction strategies at the local level. The GSEs should be required to drop their opposition to experimentation and move to a more constructive posture.”

•            Lawrence Summers, former Treasury Secretary under President Clinton and former Economic Adviser under President Obama (Oct. 24, 2011) (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-to-stabilize-the-housing-market/2011/10/23/gIQA7lveAM_story_1.html)

“A weaker than anticipated housing market poses a serious threat to the economic expansion—probably the most serious on the current horizon.  It may thus be worthwhile for policymakers to consider steps to ensure housing remains on track. … A more dramatic and costly policy step, but one with the best odds of ending the housing crash quickly and definitively, would have the government facilitate loan modifications with substantial principal writedowns.”

•            Mark Zandi, Chief Economist, Moody’s Analytics (May 25, 2011) (www.economy.com/mark-zandi/documents/To-Shore-Up-the-Recovery-Help-Housing.pdf)

“To halt the fall in house prices, the government should reduce mortgage principal when it exceeds 110 percent of the home value.”

•            Martin S. Feldstein, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan (Oct. 12, 2011) (www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/opinion/how-to-stop-the-drop-in-home-values.html)

“There are two different housing market problems, one due to excess supply the other due to insufficient demand. … Given the rather different circumstances of the two housing markets, it makes sense to write down mortgages differently based on local default conditions.”

•            Hal Varian, Chief Economist, Google (Oct. 27, 2010) (www.economist.com/economics/by-invitation/guest-contributions/tailor_write-downs_local_market_conditions)

“They’d be bankrupt if not for the bailouts.  For their part, bondholders need to understand that we’re not earning our way out of this mess and should eat losses now before they get nothing.”

•            Barry Ritholtz, CEO and Director, Equity Research Fusion IQ (Oct. 3, 2011) (www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/03/debt-relief-haircut-economists_n_991909.html)

“Reducing principal on under water mortgages may be the most—if not only—effective way of deleveraging household balance sheets in a world where house price inflation in the future is unlikely to be imminent or large. …Writing down principal would be far better use of government stimulus than writing off losses on GSE portfolios due to rising losses from foreclosures and delinquencies.”

•            Viral Archarya, Academic Advisor to the Federal Reserve Banks of New York, Philadelphia and Cleveland (Oct. 22, 2010) (www.economist.com/economics/by-invitation/guest-contributions/yes_its_best_route_household_deleveraging)

“We advocate a legal reform that would allow homeowners to reduce principal while giving mortgage holders an equity interest.  Such a plan would give homeowners an incentive to keep or resell their homes, thus reducing the market value loss of homes while protecting the effective value of creditors’ interests.”

•            Eric A. Posner, former Department of Justice Attorney, and Luigi Zingales, National Bureau of Economic Research and Center for Economic Policy Research (Dec. 4, 2009) (http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/luigi.zingales/research/papers/a_loan_modification_approach_aler.pdf)

The Illinois segment of a national study of state budgets  The Cost of Cuts in Illinois: Budget Cuts Hurt Families, Communities, and the Economy conducted by A Just Society and released today with Make Wall Street Pay Illinois, a statewide coalition of which IIRON is a member, shows that every cut of 1% to the Illinois budget costs 6,230 jobs. This study highlights IIRON’s position that we are in a revenue crisis, not a spending crisis.

Although the Illinois General Assembly did raise corporate taxes in early 2011, they turned around and cut $360 million in taxes for the CME Group and Sears before the year was out.  Illinois is still facing a major shortfall in revenue – a fact which many Illinois elected officials site when calling for budget cuts instead of addressing the state’s revenue crisis.  All indications are that there is a greater interest in Springfield in furthering corporate tax rollbacks rather than creating new revenue sources.

On the whole, corporate tax rates paid to states are abysmally low: According to a report released in December of 2011 by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and Citizens for Tax Justice, between 2008 – 2010, 265 of 280 profitable Fortune 500 Companies paid state income taxes equal to only 3.0 percent of their U.S. profits.  Since the average statutory state corporate tax rate is 6.2% that means half their profits effectively escaped state taxes entirely.  Yet our “leaders” in Springfield want to cut vital services and public infrastructure rather than taxing their rich corporate  friends.

“Governor Pat Quinn emphasized the need to create jobs in the State of the State address, but if he and the legislature agree to budget cuts, it will undermine any effort to create jobs,” said Rev. Marilyn Pagan-Banks, of Northside P.O.W.E.R., a member organization of IIRON and Make Wall Street Pay Illinois.

According to The Cost of Cuts, each year since the recession hit, Illinois has cut per capita general fund spending, despite increased need for public services.

IIRON with its coalition partners in Make Wall Street Pay Illinois is urging state lawmakers to reject all proposals to roll back corporate taxes, and in fact pass a comprehensive revenue package that closes corporate tax loopholes and raises revenue in a progressive manner.  Lawmakers must also pass legislation calling for simple and accessible disclosure of state taxes actually paid by corporations in Illinois.

Like with the tax giveaways to Sears and CME, we keep hurting both our tax base and our jobs base in Illinois. Once and for all we must rid ourselves of this myth that tax breaks for the rich and big corporations create jobs.