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TheBlaze by Dave Urbanski

BEFUNKY bernie sanders verizon strike 2

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Prior to Wednesday’s strike by nearly 40,000 Verizon employees, Sen. Bernie Sanders announced to a cheering crowd in Buffalo, New York, on Monday that the corporation “in a given year has not paid a nickel in taxes” despite billions in profit.

That didn’t sit well with Verizon’s CEO, who posted a scathing response Wednesday to the Democratic presidential candidate’s “contemptible” and ”uninformed views.”

“[Sanders’] first accusation – that Verizon doesn’t pay its fair share of taxes – is just plain wrong,” Lowell McAdam wrote in a LinkedIn piece. ”As our financial statements clearly show, we’ve paid more than $15.6 billion in taxes over the last two years – that’s a 35% tax rate in 2015, for anyone who’s counting. …”

[…]

On Verizon.com/about/news page, Verizon responds accordingly:

Senator Sanders needs to get his facts straight

Source: Verizon.

Source: Verizon.

At a speech last night at the University of Buffalo, Sen. Bernie Sanders said, “Over the years Verizon has made billions of dollars in profit, but in a given year has not paid a nickel in taxes.” Sen. Sanders is dead wrong on this issue. To set the record straight, we are reposting a Feb. 24, 2016, statement from Mark Mullet, vice president of Federal Government Relations at Verizon. The issue of corporate tax reform is too important to be influenced by a continued campaign of misinformation.

Verizon paid $15.6 billion in 2014-2015 taxes

By Mark Mullet, Vice President, Federal Government Relations

In any election year, there’s always an extra amount of rhetoric about corporate taxes. But sometimes basic facts get lost in the claims and counter-claims. For example, there is a lot of misinformation about how much Verizon pays in taxes.

Let’s set the record straight: Verizon complies with all tax laws and pays the taxes it owes under the law. In 2015, that amounted to $8.445 billion. That’s $5.293 billion in income taxes (net amount of any refunds the company received); $1.284 billion in employment taxes related to its 177,700 employees; and $1.868 billion in property and other taxes.

These are the tax dollars that Verizon actually paid, as attested to by the company’s CEO and CFO, and verified by an independent auditor. The company reported these totals in its recent 10-K, which was filed with the SEC. This is even more than the $7.180 billion that Verizon paid in taxes in 2014[…]

 

While I am definitely not a Verizon fan, I am far less a fan of Bernie Sanders AND his ideology.