The big drug companies must be using some of their own steroids to keep their arrogance pumped up.

Large pharmaceutical firms have been particularly adept at both manipulating Congress into a tax amnesty and then continuing to exploit tax-haven loopholes in the US tax code, all the while cutting US jobs.

"Two years ago, when companies received a big tax break to bring home their offshore profits, the president and Congress justified it as a one-time tax amnesty that would create American jobs," reported Alex Berenson (NYT 7/24/07) "Drug makers were the biggest beneficiaries of the amnesty program, repatriating about $100 billion in foreign profits and paying only minimal taxes. "But the companies did not create many jobs in return. Instead, since 2005 the American drug industry has laid off tens of thousands of workers in this country."

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Meanwhile, at the state level, a full 62% of state firms with revenues of $100 million or more paid zero state income taxes in 2003 (the latest year for which full data was available)according to a dynamite report by Jack Norman, research director of the Institute for Wisconsin's Future. Whether these firms have a shiny reputation as good corporate citizens (eg., Racine-based SC Johnson-related companies) or gained wide notoriety for rapaciousness (eg., Wal-Mart), they share a shameful record of not paying state income taxes and shifting the burden to ordinary homeowners. As Norman wrote in Isthmus (4/5/07)http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=6214) , "Among the companies that in 2003 paid no income tax are some big names: McDonald's, Merck, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Kimberly-Clark, Johnson Controls (the largest Wisconsin-based firm), Kohl's and Snap-on Tools.

"The S.C. Johnson family of companies is especially noteworthy. Emerging from the Johnson Wax company, based in Racine, are a handful of large firms, including Johnson Financial Group, Johnson Bank, Johnson Outdoors, JohnsonDiversey, along with the original S.C. Johnson & Son. From 2000 through 2004, not a single one of these firms paid a cent in Wisconsin corporate income tax."