Bernie Sanders and Corporate Income Tax

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is a dyed in the wool socialist. He believes in redistribution of wealth on the same basis as Obama. He does not believe in the land of opportunity and the need for hard work in order to exercise the opportunities. He further castigates companies that operate profitably making money for their stockholders, one of which is me, and he gives no credence to the fact that profitable companies supply goods and services to the general public, which would be missing without those companies. He continues to be on a campaign to demonize profitable companies. His latest take in his newsletter is to criticize companies for holding profits which they made from overseas sales in foreign countries rather than return the profits to the US, where they can be taxed. In his latest newsletter, this is what he had to say:
“Instead of sheltering profits in the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens, the largest corporations in this country must pay their fair share of taxes so that our country has the revenue we need to rebuild America and reduce the deficit,” Bernie said. "At a time when corporations are making record-breaking profits, while the middle class is disappearing and senior poverty is on the rise, the last thing we should be doing is giving huge tax breaks to profitable corporations that don’t need it.” The Washington Times says that Bernie will soon reintroduce legislation to crack down on corporate tax avoidance by making sure that profits shifted to offshore tax haven subsidiaries are taxed at the top U.S. corporate tax rate.
Most corporations in the US are in business to make a profit for their owners, generally shareholders of stock. They do this by providing goods and services to the market (general public) at competitive prices. This requires efficiency in their production and marketing operations, which includes the proper handling of their finances. For this reason, all major corporations have a Chief Financial Officer to oversee the continuing need to make a profit. Without a profit, a company goes bankrupt, which means it is no longer in business and no longer able to supply goods and services to the general public.
In their operation, corporations also have an obligation to pay their federal taxes, since they are organized under US government rules for corporations. That obligation only goes so far as to fulfill the requirements of tax laws. Any excess taxes which they pay, deprive the owners of their share of profits and also reduces the corporations ability to accumulate wealth for reinvestment in new production and marketing facilities.
Forcing corporations to pay taxes on foreign generated profits before return of those profits to the United States has some advantage to US federal government revenue, but not as much as anticipated. The stockholders of the corporations obtain a portion of the profits as dividends, on which they must pay federal income tax through their Forms 1040. If the federal government takes a big chunk of taxes out of overseas generated profits, there is less money available for stockholders, in the form of dividends, and less taxes paid by those stockholders through their Forms 1040. As mentioned earlier, this also jeopardizes the corporations position in being able to expand its manufacturing and marketing facilities. This limitation jeopardizes the health of US corporations, who have to compete with foreign-based corporations not subject to the same US tax rules.
The bottom line is that we need the US corporate tax provision requiring payment of taxes on foreign generated profits only when those profits are repatriated to the US. We need it to keep our corporations healthy and continuing to do business to supply us with the ancillary goods and services they generate.
Bernie Sanders is either shortsighted in not recognizing the complete picture as indicated above, or as consistent with the operations of most socialists, he distorts the picture to generate jealousy within the voting public using the false presumption that they are not obtaining their share of goods, services and handouts from the federal government. Bernie Sanders and people like him are a danger to our society.