http://www.fiercefinance.com/story/bank-america-rapped-over-no-taxes/2011-03-28
March 28, 2011 — 7:29am ET | By Jim Kim
We noted that public anger with top financial firms has subsided since the height of the financial crisis and the subsequent bailouts. While that remains true, we have seen a recent spike in public demonstrations against Bank of America (NYSE: BAC). One group tried to crash Bank of America’s Investor Day in New York. Others have staged raucous protests at branches in many cities. At the end of a UAW convention in Detroit, union leaders led more than 100 members into a downtown Bank of America branch and succeeded in shutting down operations for 30 minutes.
One big reason for the angst is the fact that Bank of America, for the second year in a row, did not pay any federal taxes. This is not all that shocking given that the bank has been posting some massive losses. But the overall issue is worth exploring.
Many critics suggest that corporations have refined the practice of transfer pricing and other tools to reduce their U.S. tax liabilities. However, it’s unclear to what extent Bank of America does this.
A Bank of America spokesman told McClatchy that it is “a global company that has foreign subsidiaries for legal, accounting and client reasons.” The bank “pays U.S. income taxes on ‘virtually all of the income’ out of its offices in the Cayman Islands, where 59 of the 115 subsidiaries identified by the GAO were located. He didn’t have data available on the other locations.”