Top Iraq Contractor Skirts Taxes Offshore

Boston Globe:

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.

Read the whole story: Boston Globe

Comments

[demigod]

Republicans love America, because they can lie and steal and cheat and make millions while they wave the flag and talk about God. It's Americans that they hate, they don't want to pay for anything or anybody. It's like saying you love children, but you let your own children go without shoes or clothes or doctor visits. If they need food or medicine, they can get it themselves.

[MissingAmerica]

One need only to read something like this to understand why so many of our young people are saying that our system is a joke. As for me, I just see that our system is broken. Hopefully, we can elect someone to our leadership who can pull the reigns in on these crooks and get the corrupt government and their corrupt contractors out of power and into prison where they belong.

[PacificGatePost]

"The argument that by not paying taxes they are saving the government money is just absurd,"

NO KIDDING? What a novel argument for going "off-shore" and evading taxes due.

Genius Machiavellian creativity on KBR's part. No one around with the will to reprimand or stop them... it's a free world isn't it?

Can we find any appreciable levels of integrity in the board rooms?

http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/02/corporate-ethics.html

A nudge here and there along the road of moral practices might help.

[PacificGatePost]

Is it any wonder that this...

http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/02/obama-social-phenomenon.html

...... is happening? The disconnect is deeper than simple annoyance.

[craneman]

" God bless Merika"

[helonias]

Loyal Bushies are more equal than other folks

[ErnestineBass]

Correction: "more evil".

[helonias]

Two Words, Loyal Bushie

[ProfiteerInCheif]

President Bush has a brother named Neil Mallon Bush, you may recall him from the s&l scam of the 80s. You don't hear much of him these days because he has to stay under the radar. You see, he is named after Henry Neil Mallon, the longtime Bush family friend who just happened to be the CEO of a company called Dresser Industries for decades. Now, what is important about Dresser Ind (whose mission is to provide the means and infrastructure to control the world's natural energy resources) is that our president, his father George Senior, and even his grandpappy Prescott Bush all worked for Dresser Industries. Well, if you call being on the Executive Board of Directors working. In fact, Prescott Bush took the company public back in the 40s. This is the Bush family business. Anyway, in 1989 the Bush family business bought its rival called Kellogg. Then, while Cheney was CEO of Halliburton he rescued the Bush family business (Dresser) from financial catastrophe due to lawsuits by acquiring it 1998 for some 7.9 billion. Cheney then combined the Kellogg component of dresser with Brown & Root. Now we have billions being awarded to a privately owned KBR through no-bid contracts for war activity that is generated by a Bush. Beautifully done neocons! You win. For more about this go to youtube and search for "Bombshells Expose Bush pt. 1" I made this video and it has some nice looking ladies in it .

[drkazmd65]

Everybody should read Kevin Phillips, "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush".

It is a bit long-winded and repetative at stages - but if you ever wanted to see the sickening reality that underlies the inbred, self-serving, old-money elite that is running the circle-jerk known as our government it is an eye opener.

By running this war and subsequent occupation of Iraq, by defining an open-ended 'War On Terror' these scumbags have guaranteed themselves a tidy profit over, and over again.

Heckofa Job electing these idiots American electorate!

[ErnestineBass]

Excellent overview of the fascist Bush/Cheney cabal currently running the country, ProfiteerInChief!

I've spent the last decade trying to "enlighten" others regarding the relationship between Dresser Industries­/Halliburt­on/Bush/Ch­eney, et al, but Americans are so apathetic (or just plain stupid) that after about one minute their eyes glaze over, and I know they've tuned out.

At times I almost wish I could be more like Bush/Cheney; content to slit the throat of anyone who gets in the way of WHAT I WANT, but I was not raised with those kinds of "values".

Thanks again for the post. I'll check out your vid. EB

[gcallaghan]

Why are our TAX dollars going to companies not based in America? This is a shell company.. You can bet that an individual who would try such a scheme would have the IRS crawling up his ass with torches.

[abbiehoffmansghost]

More proof that these Republican -rooted companies and corporations don't want to contribute to or be a part of American society, they only want to take from the American people. I define them as enemies of America.