Comments Off on The Massive CEO Rewards for Tax Dodging
By Sarah Anderson, Chuck Collins, Scott Klinger, Sam Pizzigati ips-dc.org
Guns don’t kill people, the old saw goes. People do.
By the same token, corporations don’t dodge taxes. People do. The people who run corporations. And these people — America’s CEOs — are reaping awesomely lavish rewards for the tax dodging they have their corporations do.
In fact, corporate tax dodging has gone so out of control that 25 major U.S. corporations last year paid their chief executives more than they paid Uncle Sam in federal income taxes.
A few simple steps can put you on the path to creditworthiness — or prevent you from falling off.
A few simple steps can put you on the path to creditworthiness — or prevent you from falling off.
Five years ago Mikaal Bates was about to pool his money with some friends and make his first real estate investment. He didn’t expect any trouble on the credit score front, as he’d always paid all his bills in full and on time. But when Bates received the credit report he needed to get the loan and seal the deal, he found a nasty surprise: Thousands of dollars in unpaid phone bills racked up by someone who’d stolen his identity.
Millions of consumers have fallen out of favor with the credit scoring gods.
Some lost their jobs or were just overwhelmed by mounting debt. Others got caught up in the real estate bubble or had major medical bills. Whatever the reason, the rising number of foreclosures, short sales, late credit card payments and the ultimate credit sin — bankruptcies — have left black marks on credit reports most everywhere.
So what can these people do to repair their credit?
The simple answer is to focus on the information that is used to generate the all-powerful FICO score — the measure used most frequently by traditional lenders to determine creditworthiness. Its scale runs from 300 points to 850 points; the higher the score, the better your credit standing. “FICO is still the 500-pound gorilla,” said John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education at SmartCredit.com. “In 2011, the best way to get credit from the mainstream lenders is to have a good FICO score.”
Consumers can hope that the banks will eventually consider alternatives to the traditional FICO score, which was developed by Fair Isaac Corporation and has been in wide use for about two decades. After all, as banks regain their appetite for lending, they will be looking for ways to differentiate between borrowers with the same scores, some of whom are temporarily struggling and others who chronically have trouble with money.
For now, though, the FICO score reigns. The best antidote to a poor score is time. Still, there are a half dozen ways to speed the process, or, at the least, avoid even more credit trouble.
