"Oxfam said analysis of global data showed that dividend payments to shareholders over the last three years grew an average of 14 times faster than worker pay across 31 major economies"
The Supreme Court agreed to hear a case next term that could #preempt Congress and the Biden administration from instituting a #federal#wealth#tax — another potentially lucrative gift for conservative justices’ billionaire benefactors and the super rich.
A think tank affiliated with some of those benefactors recently pressed the court to accept the case and outlaw such taxes.
The new case, #Moore v. United States, is tailored to try to block Democrats’ promised agenda by #defining what can — and cannot — count as #taxable “#income” under the Constitution.
It specifically challenges a one-time levy on some shareholders for their foreign corporate earnings that was included in the 2017 Republican tax law.
The plaintiffs are a Washington state couple who faced a $15,000 tax bill under that provision for a stake they owned in an Indian company. They argue that their #corporate#earnings should #not count as taxable income under the Constitution because they had not been distributed to shareholders as #dividends.
The real goal of the case is “to slam shut the door on a #federal#wealth#tax,” as the couple’s lawyers wrote in a 2021 column. The couple’s petition to the Supreme Court expressly decries previous wealth tax proposals from Democrats, including Biden, and urges the justices to “head off a major constitutional clash down the line https://www.levernews.com/the-supreme-courts-next-gift-for-its-billionaire_benefactors/
For customers of #SouthWestWater, this will come as no surprise, but in the two years to March 2022, SWW spent more on interest payments & #dividends than it did on maintaining (improving) its infrastructure....
You can decide for yourself whether this in any way contributed to their catastrophic failure of #water supply early this year.
That this included a 'special dividend' approved by #OfWat merely confirms that the regulator(s) have been asleep at the wheel.