[Business Insider] A report published by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations  gives an inside look on Apple's absolutely genius tax avoidance strategies. For example, Apple uses a variety of offshore structures and arrangements to shift billions of dollars from the United States to Ireland. The U.S. corporate tax rate is 35%, while Apple said it has negotiated a special corporate tax rate in Ireland of less than 2%*. 

Apple has found the secret to not paying taxes. You just avoid taxes by not declaring a tax residency for the company that oversees the entirety of your international income. 

Read the entire article >>

[Yahoo! ] The 32-year-old hotel heiress is now speaking out about being the victim of the so-called Bling Ring burglaries that took place four years ago in her Hollywood Hills home – a home wherein she allowed Sofia Coppola to film a movie about the events.

Suspects wore Louboutins

Paris, Paris, Paris

A major U.S. private prison operator known for inmate abuse, violations, and disregard for the truth reported a 56-percent spike in profit in the first quarter of 2013, due in part to its new strategy for drastically reducing its taxes, the Associated Press reports. During a conference call touting its success, representatives at GEO Group boasted that the company continues to have “solid occupancy rates in mid to high 90s” and that they are optimistic “regarding the outlook for the industry,” in part due to a “growing offender population.”

1. Accelerated stock returns
2. Bull markets make CEOs fabulously wealthy, and they make shareholders indifferent to their fabulous wealth.

[Atlantic] Ron Johnson, the disgraced outgoing CEO of JC Penney, made an astonishing 1,795-times the average wage and benefits of his department store workers, according to a new survey from Bloomberg. That makes JC Penney the single most unequal company in the U.S., by CEO-worker pay ratio.

[eFinancialCareers] In the UK, only the top 1% of income taxpayers earn anything more than £150k according to figures from the Office of National Statistics. In the US, the top 1% of people earn more than $370k according to the Internal Revenue Service.  And yet, some bankers in the top bracket are having money troubles.

[eFinancialCareers] The social conditioning to spend heavily is insidious and is enforced by bankers’ peers, said Nell Montgomery, an ex-Goldman Sachs sales trader-turned psychotherapist. “People in banking get into a thought process whereby having three children at private schools costing £100k after tax is normal. You hear people saying they’d rather pay for private tutoring than spend £10k on a holiday. It’s a mindset in which things which are not normal come to be perceived as standard,” she said.

Keeping up with the Jones's isn't a good enough reason to justify the rampant, corrupt overpayment of banking employees. Sorry chumps. But we hope all of you greedy bastards go bankrupt.

[Daily News] FBI agents have asked questions about gifts the McDonnells have received from company CEO Jonnie Williams and whether the Republican governor or his administration aided the company in return.

Articles

NY Daily News >>

Washingtion Post >>

[Miami Herald] Miami Heat President Pat Riley sold his spectacular bayfront mansion in gated Gables Estates for $16.8 million last March.

The 12,856-square-foot Mediterranean-style dream house at 180 Arvida Parkway has a theater, wine cellar, library, and a sprawling pool with waterfalls and an aqua bar.

View a slideshow of the former Riley estate here >>

We don't need more corporate control of our media and our politics. We need journalism that fights corruption — not hack writing that covers it up.

Stopping the Koch brothers’ bid for the Tribune Company is about supporting the kind of journalism that serves communities and acts as a watchdog against the wealthy and powerful.

Tell the Tribune Co.: Don't sell your papers to the Koch brothers.

[WAPO] Drawn by the prospect of double-figure profit margins on rents and the resale of homes whose prices plummeted in the crash, hedge funds, Wall Street investors and other institutions are crowding out individual home buyers.

Lured by the promise of big monetary returns, 70% of all home sales are being closed by banks and the top 1% of the nation's financial elite. Yet again, big business, banks, and the wealthy are proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are the most destructive entities in the country. Fleecing every penny they can possibily scratch away from the middle class.