Home Depot has the highest tax rate of any non-oil company on this list.According to Bloomberg,
- Income tax expense: $2.7 billion
- Net income: $4.5 billion
- Effective tax rate: 37.2%.
The Federal Open Market Committee said yesterday it will cut monthly bond purchases by $10 billion to $65 billion.The Fed creates this much in "tax revenues": $65B x 12 = $780B.
Home Depot is this much of the Fed in terms of "tax revenues": 2.7 / 780 = 0.00346.
In other words, Home Depot, a monstrous chain of retail home improvement stores, has tax contributions less than 0.35% of what the Fed creates out of thin air. Home Depot is effectively a rounding error when it comes to the income calculations of the politicians. There's an air of unreality to the whole affair when a company like Home Depot is effectively meaningless compared to the fantasy numbers created by the whim of the Fed.
Peggy Noonan has noticed the results.
“House of Cards” very famously does nothing to enhance Washington’s reputation. It reinforces the idea that the capital has no room for clean people. The earnest, the diligent, the idealistic, they have no place there...I guess they think they’re showing they’re in on the joke and hip to the culture. I guess they think they’re impressing people with their surprising groovelocity...Why have them, indeed. After all, the money they spend isn't coming from those pathetic, honest, homely rubes who go to work every day ...
But it’s all vaguely decadent, no? Or maybe not vaguely. America sees Washington as the capital of vacant, empty souls, chattering among the pillars...
We’re at a funny point in our political culture. To have judgment is to be an elitist. To have dignity is to be yesterday. To have standards is to be a hypocrite—you won’t always meet standards even when they’re your own, so why have them?
2 comments:
Of course Home Depot is irrelevant. Corporate taxes all together are practically irrelevant, at only 10% of Federal tax receipts. This is dwarfed by individual income taxes and Social Security taxes, and as you say, tiny compared to the annual deficit.
Which is why pushing for higher tax rates on corporations isn't going to "save" us from deficit spending. The only real solution is to cut spending. And there the cuts have to be where there are expenditures to cut, which is mostly Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, and the military.
Meanwhile, our supposedly "tea party" congressional representative keeps mouthing platitudes about cutting costs, but refuses to even consider any cuts to those three areas. Which means he really isn't serious about cutting costs at all. Bah.
I agree, Tim. Having said that, set politics aside and ask yourself: doesn't free money have a corrosive effect on government representatives and officials?
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