I point this out because the comments on the health plan are incorrect. Only companies with over 100 employees will be included in the health care program. If those companies do provide health care, they will get a tax incentive. If they don’t they will have to contribute to a fund that would be used to help subsidizes low income folks. Taxing health benefits as income (as McCain wants to do) provides a direct incentive for companies to no longer provide health care. The problem with this is a lot of people today are able to get health care because they are part of a group plan at a company. In other words if you have diabetes, heart disease, cancer, HIV, MS or any other serious health issue you won’t be able to get health care AND if you had it before they can drop you after.

The article also doesn’t mention the cost savings that bringing the $10 billion / month cost of the Iraq war to an end. I think it is fair to assume that those costs would reduce much more quickly under Obama.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most U.S. and foreign corporations doing business in the United States avoid paying any federal income taxes, despite trillions of dollars worth of sales, a government study released on Tuesday said.

The Government Accountability Office said 72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005.

More than half of foreign companies and about 42 percent of U.S. companies paid no U.S. income taxes for two or more years in that period, the report said.

During that time corporate sales in the United States totaled $2.5 trillion, according to Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, who requested the GAO study.

The report did not name any companies. The GAO said corporations escaped paying federal income taxes for a variety of reasons including operating losses, tax credits and an ability to use transactions within the company to shift income to low tax countries.

With the U.S. budget deficit this year running close to the record $413 billion that was set in 2004 and projected to hit a record $486 billion next year, lawmakers are looking to plug holes in the U.S. tax code and generate more revenues.

Dorgan in a statement called the report “a shocking indictment of the current tax system.” Levin said it made clear that “too many corporations are using tax trickery to send their profits overseas and avoid paying their fair share in the United States.”

The study showed about 28 percent of large foreign corporations, those with more than $250 million in assets, doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes in 2005 despite $372 billion in gross receipts, the senators said. About 25 percent of the largest U.S. companies paid no federal income taxes in 2005 despite $1.1 trillion in gross sales that year, they said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1249465620080812?sp=true