RUSH: Jackson, Mississippi. This is Robert, and I’m glad you waited, sir. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, thanks for taking my call. I wanted to tell your listeners about something you may or may not have seen this week, I just read this yesterday, said that, you know, several multibillion-dollar corporations paid their CEOs more than they paid the federal government in taxes. Now, I know how you feel about individuals who don’t pay their taxes, but I wanted to know how you feel about corporations who don’t pay taxes. I mean, do you harbor the same antagonism for them?

RUSH: How do I feel about individuals that don’t pay their taxes?

CALLER: No, corporations.

RUSH: You said that you know how I feel about individuals who don’t pay taxes. How do I feel about that?

CALLER: I’ve heard you say that 47% of Americans don’t pay taxes, you know, and of course —

RUSH: Well, but they’re not illegally avoiding taxes. They don’t have to pay taxes because they’re being exempted. Their votes are being purchased.

CALLER: — a third of their income in sales and property and payroll and excise tax.

RUSH: Look, the only major corporation I know not paying US taxes is General Electric.

CALLER: GE, eBay, Verizon, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Bank of America, Citibank, I mean I could go on.

RUSH: Are you trying to tell me that every one of those corporations pays zero US taxes?

CALLER: Zero taxes, Rush, sometimes they get money back from the federal government.

RUSH: Sometimes there are tax credits. The oil companies have a tax credit for exploration, but I’m not aware that Exxon’s not paying any federal — I thought GE was it.

CALLER: Well, I mean Exxon actually got a hundred something million dollars back from the government last year instead of paying taxes, I mean that’s putting a big economic drain on our country, don’t you —

RUSH: Let me answer your question, and I don’t know where you’re going with this, but where we are right now, as much money kept in the private sector, the better. We have a federal government out of control. We have demonstrated that sending all this money to the federal government bankrupts and ruins and destroys the economics of this country. The federal government is not God. The federal government is not the best user of money.

CALLER: So you’re saying nobody should pay taxes at all —

RUSH: No, I did not say nobody should pay taxes. I’m saying that a lot of people are overtaxed, a lot of people are undertaxed, the whole purpose of taxation is out the window. The tax code is no longer.

CALLER: — more than GE pays — (crosstalk)

RUSH: I don’t care about any of that. The tax code right now is not written to raise money to run the government. The tax code right now is written for political patronage purposes.

CALLER: Exactly. That’s why the richest and corporations always get the breaks while middle class and the poor always get the biggest hits —

RUSH: The middle class and the poor are not paying any income taxes.

CALLER: They’re paying plenty of taxes —

RUSH: Forty-seven percent of Americans who work pay no income taxes. The top 10% are paying close to 50% of all income taxes, sir. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re filled with a bunch of liberal misinformation, and you got yourself worked up here into a lather over what you think is a totally unfair system where the rich aren’t paying anything. The rich are the ones supporting this country right now, and Obama’s taking aim at them, and if you were listening yesterday, you know that in the last two years the number of millionaires and people that earn over $10 million is down by 39%. Now, if that makes you happy, I’m sorry for you, cause that’s not helping anybody because those are the people that hire people.

I’m gonna tell you this, the number of millionaires and people who earn over $10 million is down 30, 39%, and is any of that money ending up with you? A lot of people think, yeah, soak the rich, give me my share. You’re not getting it. Where’s it going? We’re still in massive debt, deficits, national debt skyrocketing out of control, wealth is being destroyed. I know a lot of people on the left think wealth ought to be destroyed because somehow they think that with the socialists and utopian redistribution they’re gonna get their share of it. Nobody’s getting it. The government is out of money. It doesn’t have any. And so the only place they can go to get money is to people who do have it and they’re taking it from them.

What’s going on in this country is an absolute outrage. And instead of being all worked up about five or six individual cases here — by the way, the biggest culprit in what has you exorcised is General Electric, Obama’s best friend. You’ve been poisoned about taxes and who pays them and who doesn’t, and you think the tax code ought to be used for punishment, you think the tax code ought to be used for getting even with people. The purpose of the tax code is to raise sufficient revenue to run the government and the country. It’s no longer for that purpose. If it were, we would be lowering everybody’s rates, we’d be trying to create as many new jobs as possible, as many new taxpayers as possible. That’s how you create more revenue to run your precious government. But tax collections are down because there are more and more people out of work, more and more people not paying taxes, corporations, individuals, I don’t care how you slice it, and so what’s the government doing? Printing and borrowing and spending anyway. Irresponsibly.

They’re spending the money of yours and your children, your grandchildren. They’re spending money of sperm cells that haven’t even found an egg yet to fertilize, for crying out loud. You need to redirect your anger here, and you need to change the definition of what’s gonna make you happy ’cause I’ll guarantee you every one of these corporations that you think, that you’ve been is not paying taxes, let’s go just take everything they’ve got, let’s shut ’em down. Let’s shut down ExxonMobil, let’s shut down every oil company, let’s shut down all these people, and I guarantee you you’re not gonna be a penny wealthier after that happens. You’re gonna be worse off. You vote for people who want you to be made happy when somebody else gets screwed. By screwed, I mean having their taxes raised.

You’re voting for people who think you should be satisfied and happy when you hear that somebody else has their taxes raised. It doesn’t help your life, it doesn’t change your life except for the worse, because for every corporation taxed out of existence or taxed out of profit, that’s another corporation for which you have no chance of ever getting a job. But if you think that these corporations ought to be taxed out of existence because for some reason they’re nothing but a bunch of giant thieves, I’m gonna tell you that if it ever happened you would still be as miserable then as you are now.

RUSH: ExxonMobil paid $78.6 billion in taxes worldwide. In the United States they paid $7.7 billion in sales tax and duties. But our caller was exploiting one technically correct
point, because the company can deduct foreign taxes, and it did get a refund on federal taxes. But Exxon’s effective income tax rate was 47% worldwide, the highest in three years. But they can deduct taxes they pay around the world so that’s why they got a federal refund, and GE is doing the same thing. GE, $5 billion in profit, and they pay no tax in the United States because it’s earned outside the United States.

Now, corporations pay a 35% tax rate in this country. It’s the highest in the world. They pay a ridiculously high federal corporate tax for the most part based on what other countries tax their companies, and after they pay their corporate tax, then the shareholders who cash out their investments pay a capital gains tax on top of the corporate income tax already paid by the corporation, and the people who work for the corporation pay an individual federal income tax on top of what the corporation already has paid its corporate income tax. A dollar earned by a corporation is taxed not once but at least twice. This is how successful the left has been. Their enemies list is every corporation. They’ve got people believing that they don’t pay taxes. The people that work at these companies pay taxes. The corporations do.

But here’s the dirty little secret, Mr. Dummkopf. The dirty little secret is that corporations don’t pay taxes. They build the taxes into the price of the product you buy or pay for. All of those costs are built into the cost of the product or service the corporation’s producing for the consumer. Now, maybe Warren Buffett’s company is disputing its tax bills since 2002 with the federal government, but many companies have been paying on time what they are said to owe. Warren Buffett is in arrears. Warren Buffett, who wants you paying every dime of your estate tax, is fighting the Berkshire Hathaway income tax. And while we are at it here, what of the hundreds of billions of dollars a year that the federal government misuses or pays in fraudulent schemes every year? Imagine if individuals and businesses could keep the money instead. Why is this never considered when we talk about taxation? Hundreds of billions of dollars every single year.

The General Accounting Office puts out endless reports on this waste. Where do you people get off? I get so ticked off at you intellectually lazy people who think that the government is God, that every dollar they get or spend is somehow sacred. There is more fraud and waste and misuse. If the federal government were held accountable to the law as corporations are held accountable, half the federal government would be in prison. But, no, the government is good, the government is taking care of poor people, the government’s caring for people with health care and Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security. Fixing fraud, waste, and crime in the government seems to never be a priority. Instead, whether we are screwing some individual or class of individuals or companies is the priority.

Warren Buffett hasn’t paid taxes for his company for four of the last ten years. He’s disputing it. But when it comes to the estate tax he wants you to pay as much as you can be made to pay. Claims that ExxonMobil did not pay taxes in 2009 are just plain incorrect. All these other companies as well. ExxonMobil paid $78.6 billion in taxes worldwide. But the precious US government didn’t get its fair share of this. Why should they? They’re trying to put ’em out of business, for crying out loud. The United States government under Barack Obama is trying to make it impossible for ExxonMobil to do business in this country. God, some of you people are stupid. You people on the left are just plain dangerously ignorant, running around all wound up, ticked off, angry. You don’t even know why, and then you make yourself believe you’re gonna be happy if somebody gets screwed. What kind of life is that, to run around wanting your happiness to be deponent whether somebody you supposedly hate gets screwed, and you don’t even know the people being talked about.

Ah, screw social justice. I’ll tell you what. You hate ExxonMobil and all that, you go try to get gasoline, you go do what it takes to put gasoline in your tank yourself, or your hybrid, or your stupid electric car. Whatever it takes to power that, you go do it yourself. If the people making it possible for you to drive your car are such creeps, SOBs, and whatever else, worthy of your hatred. Born of your own ignorance. Yes, Snerdley, I’m ticked at ’em. Just one of these days. Doesn’t take much. I’m not suffering fools gladly today. Dummkopfs, sniveling little nasal whinny — nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah. Take it somewhere else.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’ll tell you what ticks me off about this, and I think this is the key. These liberals like this last sniveling little guy that called me, they love the products and services that businesses provide. They love gasoline. They may run around and say they hate the polluting aspects of it, but I don’t see any of them taking the hoof express to get where they’re going. They all drive. I don’t see them driving around in a horse and buggy. They may think they’re doing some good by driving a hybrid, but they’re still putting gasoline in whatever vehicle they use to get around in.

They use all these products, all these services. They use ’em as much as anybody else does. But they hate the people that provide it. These people drive into a gas station seething with rage. But they buy it. This is how irrational they are. They don’t have one speck of appreciation for the work necessary to make their lives easier. They’ve somehow been convinced to hate all these companies, corporations, people that work at them, or what have you. Folks, we face an irrational, insane, delusional enemy. I’m talking about here in a political sense.