How many of you - does anybody read this? - were aware that the congress passed the American Jobs Creation Act? Several months ago, there was some talk about a provision giving multi-national companies a "tax holiday" on repatriated non-US earnings. The last time that this was allowed, the same rationale by the corps, e.g., "we'll create more jobs with the tax savings", produced no real uptick in employment at the affected companies. The feeling this time was, that congress would actually do the patriotic thing, and not allow a tax holiday. Sorry folks, we loose again - the companies paid a 5% rate.

Here is the text summary of the NPR story from this morning:

Corporations don't lobby Congress for fun. They lobby because it helps their bottom line. Getting a regulation gutted or a tax loophole created means extra cash for the corporation. But getting laws changed can be very expensive. How much money does a corporation get back from investing in a good lobbyist?

It's a messy, secretive system so it was always hard to study. But in 2004, economists found a bill so simple, so lucrative, that they could finally track the return on lobbying investment.

The American Jobs Creation Act benefited hundreds of multinational corporations with a huge, one-time tax break. Without the law, companies that brought profits earned abroad back to the U.S. had to pay a tax rate of 35 percent. With the law, that rate dropped to just over 5 percent. It saved those companies billions of dollars.

In a recent study, researchers Raquel Alexander and Susan Scholz calculated the total amount the corporations saved from the lower tax rate. They compared the taxes saved to the amount the firms spent lobbying for the law. Their research showed the return on lobbying for those multinational corporations was 22,000 percent. That means for every dollar spent on lobbying, the companies got $220 in tax benefits.

I don't agree with the math, but you get the idea. Just more proof that congress works for the corporations and not the citizens of the USofA.