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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (165741)	7/29/2001 8:09:58 PM
From: ColtonGang	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

What else don't we know.........The Cheating of America How Tax Avoidance and Evasion by the Super Rich Are Costing the Country Billions - and What You Can Do About It Taxes have long been an issue of impassioned debate in American life and politics. Although many agree with Oliver Wendell Holmes’ famed quote that “taxes are what we pay for a civilized society,” some of America’s wealthiest individuals and corporations have taken it upon themselves to enjoy the fruits of that society without paying their fair share. In their new book, The Cheating of America, Charles Lewis, Bill Allison and the Center for Public Integrity, exhaustively document how several prominent names in everyday American life – from Apple Computer and Colgate to the producers behind such blockbuster films as Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Total Recall – have shirked their civic responsibility to contribute financially toward the well-being of the nation as a whole, and instead have used their wealth to keep those fortunes out of the reach of the Internal Revenue Service. Meanwhile, the IRS continues to reap only pennies on the dollar for those cases where wealthy taxpayers challenge the government in federal court; faced with the prospect of crossing swords with armies of high-priced lawyers, the IRS often instead focuses its efforts on middle-income taxpayers, some of whom resort to representing themselves in U.S. Tax Court. While Leona Helmsley’s bold proclamation that “only the little people pay taxes” did nothing to save her from prosecution, it may have been a prescient view of the tax system as we know it today.