They may be on opposite side of the spectrum but Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both like the idea of getting a good deal… at least on their taxes. As voters in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island head to the their respective polls a Guardian story has been circulating, highlighting the fact that both Clinton and Trump share the same corporate address, taking advantage of the “Delaware Loophole.”
A Google View of Clinton's and Trump's corporate adress along with 285,000 companies
According to the article both Clinton and Trump share an address at 1209 North Orange Street but they aren’t alone. The office building is the registered address of more than 285,000 companies, which include Apple, Coca-Cola, Walmart and American Airlines, just to name a few of the fortune 500 companies. With more than a quarter of a million companies sharing the address it actually puts the Cayman Island tax shelters to shame as its famous building, the Ugland House has only 18,000 registered companies. Basically, companies set up their “corporate offices” in Delaware to take advantage of the state strict secrecy laws, friendly courts and tax loopholes. According to the article the “Delaware loophole,” allows companies to shift earnings from others states to Delaware. The tax laws are so lenient that corporations are only taxed on physical incomes made within the State. The consumer group PennPIRG released a report in 2014 that noted because of domestic safe-havens like Delaware, other states lose out on almost a billion dollars a year in taxes. Just image how low your taxes would be if corporations and the wealthy actually paid their taxes instead of finding ways to dodge them or the condition of our infrastructure if governments had full coffers. It is a sad day to see that the two front runners in the Presidential primary races have the same view. They don’t give a damn about the tax payer. The journalist did talk to a Clinton representative who said that the company, Clinton registered ZFS Holdings LLC: “was set up when Secretary Clinton left the State Department as an entity to manage her book and speaking income. No federal, state, or local taxes were saved by the Clintons as a result of this structure.” The question though that was not answered is that if this wasn’t done for lower taxes then why didn’t Clinton establish the company in her “home” state of New York. As expected Trump’s response was even more bombastic. He address the Delaware issue at a recent rally. He asked his staff to find out how many companies he had registered in the state (by the way it’s not a good sign of leadership if you don’t know how many companies you know) ““We have 378 entities registered in the state of Delaware, meaning I pay you a lot of money, folks. I don’t feel at all guilty, OK?,” he said at a rally in Harrington Delaware. Of course he should feel guilty, extremely guilty, because he owns 378 companies that actually avoided paying their full taxes. How many small businesses are suffering under the burden of taxes because they can’t afford to pay some shiny tax lawyer to find them a shelter or create a shell corporation? What is even worse is that since the release of the Panama Papers, Clinton has called offshore tax haves “a perversion.” If Clinton truly believe what she preached then she wouldn’t be sharing a corporate address with some of the biggest companies in America. Okay it’s not illegal to have a shell corporation or create a tax shelter in Delaware, but it is definitely a morally grey area. The U.S. was created as the land of equal opportunity; but instead the wealthy are able to tilt the game to their favor leaving the rest of us to scramble and share the meager leftovers. And this is the heart of the issue, if we can’t trust our potential leaders to do the right thing then who can we trust?
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