Dept. of No Comment
Mar 6th, 2008 at 11:36 am by Susie
CAYMAN ISLANDS - Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation’s top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven.
More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq - including about 10,500 Americans - are listed as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean. Neither company has an office or phone number in the Cayman Islands.
The Defense Department has known since at least 2004 that KBR was avoiding taxes by declaring its American workers as employees of Cayman Islands shell companies, and officials said the move allowed KBR to perform the work more cheaply, saving Defense dollars.
I will admit that it is wrong that any company doing business with the government should not be a company based in and paying taxes in this country. That said I think this speaks to the need for real changes in the tax structure in the country, no more revisions and tweaks to the tax code. That doesn’t work and has just created more of a mess it’s time to throw out the tax code and start from scratch. Which would give the chance to have a fair and simple tax code without all the loopholes and special interest exceptions that exist today and only get worse with each revision.
nice catch suzie!
If they want to go offshore to avoid taxes, fine. Let them go.
They can leave behind their US citizenship, all of their US government (and other government) contracts, and any other benefits or privileges they get from living here, and get the f*@$ out.
Don’t let the door hit in the ass on the way out.