Greetings, Incorporated Americans, how may we best serve you today? Oh, just by paying a tithe for the privilege of enriching corporate coffers, that’s all, no big deal. According to investigative journalist and authorDavid Cay Johnston, you might already be doing so without even knowing it, which he seems to think is bad, but REALLY aren't we just cutting out the middle man here by paying our taxes directly to our corporate overlords, instead of waiting for them to get  multibillion dollar tax benefits or carryback provisions?

Take a look at your pay stub. In all but six states, workers will see a deduction for state income taxes … In a growing number of states, your state income taxes will also be increasing the profits of your employer.

You read that right. Many employers in nineteen states can now keep state income taxes withheld from paychecks. General Electric, Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble have these deals, along with a host of foreign firms from the German computer maker Siemens to the Swedish appliance maker Electrolux and a host of Canadian, European and Japanese banks. In all more than 2,700 companies get to pocket the state income taxes withheld from some of their workers' paychecks.

Isn’t that nice to know that this is an equal opportunity tithe, wherein we can pay homage to our Incorporated Japanese and Canadians as well as Incorporated Americans?

[Beneficiaries of this policy include] Motorola Mobility, the cell phone maker. Just for promising not to move out of state [Illinois] and take three thousand jobs with it, Motorola gets to siphon $136 million from the paychecks of its well-paid high-tech workers. As if to make this transaction all the more interesting, Motorola Mobility agreed to be acquired by Google soon after the state made the big tax deal. The Motorola board then paid its CEO, Sanjay Jha, to go away. He received $66 million. Thus, Illinois taxpayers underwrote his golden parachute, which amounted to roughly half the value of the worker taxes flowing to Google…

No law requires the companies to notify the workers that state income taxes are being diverted. The state treats you as having paid your taxes even though it never got the money.

So the companies take away a little bit of our Speech every paycheck in exchange for letting us work for them, no big deal. You know what will fix this is eliminating loopholes, less regulations, less taxes, blah blah etc.

[Truth-Out]