Among lowest taxpayers were companies whose CEOs have become high-profile advocates for corporate social responsibility
Some of the US’s most profitable corporations, including General Motors, Citigroup and Netflix, have slashed their tax bills in the years since the passage of the Trump tax cuts, with nearly a quarter paying rates in the single digits and 23 paying nothing, a report has found.
The 2017 law cut the top corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%. But the new assessment of corporate tax avoidance, published on Thursday by the non-profit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (Itep), found that during the first five years the law was in effect, many profitable public companies in the US paid a far lower rate in practice.
Shareholders aren’t the same as stakeholders. Shareholders are always stakeholders, but stakeholders aren’t always share holders.
Stakeholders are people with any kind of interest in the company doing well, this includes people like employees, suppliers, and customers. Basically anyone that benefits from a business doing well.
I feel like he might be arguing for the kind of change that the current “anything to keep the stock price going up so the shareholders stay happy” model desperately needs.
Probably a bunch of lipservice to keep shareholders happy by addressing risk that they all foresee…namely the shifting temperament towards large corporations by the people who’s value is being stolen for shareholders gains.
Soundbites over substance is the name of the corporate PR game.
It’s so nuts…
Speaking to shareholders, about ‘shifting’ the model, in an open and public medium.
He’s literally talking to people who want their money to grow, about changing how the money grows…if you read between the lines it’s basically
"Hey we know this is a growing concern, here in the c-suite we see it coming too. Rest assured, we’re going to pander to public sentiment so our shareholder profits remain intact. Our hope is that in doing so we attract more talent to exploit thereby maintaining that upward trajectory we all know and love.
Remember ‘unlimited PTO’? Yeah, we’ll give these guys the same treatment."
But because these statements are public as are the financials etc, they won’t just outright say it. I’ll bet you quarterly and annual filings have the same type of stuff in the section disclosing current and foreseeable risks.
I’d say you’re probably right about that, especially considering that’s the CEO who’s building a doomsday bunker with a flammable moat, right next to zuck in Hawaii.
The modern CEO has been bred to appease the shareholders, but not any shareholders…just the ones with enough skin in the game and enough influence/power to destroy lives, CEOs included.
The game is fully rigged, the only ones who have any real free will are the hedgefunds and investment houses. Keep those entities happy and your little company thrives.
As a CEO, you’re just the colonial general sitting in the big house exploiting a workforce and shipping the value/profits back to the homeland.
Just look at Bezos…ex hedgefund guy builds digital platform to buy/sell books, and then AWS happens, and then literally thousands of brick and mortar stores close down giving amazon a monopoly in lots of regions. Visionary entrepreneur my ass…modern day colonizer and profiteer is closer to the truth.
Bezos will be a trillionair in this decade, his shareholders basically have a infinite money supply, and like Walmart; Amazon employees are getting their hands chopped off because they didn’t produce enough rubber for the King/Queen/HFT-Firm
Corporate social responsibility as a concept is even broader than that – it’s not just anyone who has interest in the company doing well, but broad consideration of anyone impacted by the decisions of the company.
A company might be able to save operational costs by dumping toxic sludge in a river, but within a CSR framework, people living downstream would be considered stakeholders and the potential negative impact of the decision on those people is supposed to be taken into account when decisions are made. The corporation is supposed to have a responsibility to do right by anyone impacted by their actions wherever possible.
At least that’s the theory. It shouldn’t be surprising that the language of CSR gets pretty commonly coopted by companies looking to whitewash what they’re actually doing.