US Companies Pay Over $1 Billion in Taxes to Russia Amid Ongoing Ukraine War
US Companies Pay Over $1 Billion in Taxes to Russia Amid Ongoing Ukraine War
American firms paid Russia $1.2bn in profit taxes in 2023, according to figures shared exclusively with Newsweek.
American firms in Russia paid the country $1.2 billion in profit taxes in 2023, according to figures from campaign group B4Ukraine and the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) Institute shared exclusively with Newsweek. This tax contribution makes the U.S. the largest contributor of foreign profit taxes to Russia, something a former top U.S. diplomat called "shameful."
Name and shame.
"According to the new research, the 10 companies that paid the most profit taxes to Russia in 2023 were tobacco company Philip Morris International ($220 million), beverage corporation PepsiCo ($135 million), confectionary company Mars ($99 million), health and hygiene consumer goods firm Procter & Gamble ($67 million), confectionary company Mondelez ($62 million), investment bank Citigroup ($53 million), agricultural company Cargill ($50 million), pharmaceutical firm Johnson & Johnson ($42 million), independent soft-drink bottler Coca-Cola Hellenic ($34 million) and oilfield service company Weatherford ($32 million)." -per article....
Just the usual douchebags, got it
How do sanctions not prevent this? I genuinely do not understand.
Well, it hasn't been sanctioned. There aren't any steps taken to force businesses that were previously operating in Russia to pull out.
Tbh, if we're looking at it from a capitalist viewpoint (and they are, so we have to in order to discuss things as they are), pulling out entirely is a bad decision, so taking that step without being forced to isn't going to happen.
It's a bad decision on the capitalist level for a few reasons. One, it's short term thinking. The only reason to pull out would be if you thought that things would stay exactly the same for at least the next fifty years or so. Since Putin is unlikely to live that long, and there's a fairly predictable set of possibilities for the power structure after that, it makes more sense to stay there, but scale down as much as possible without triggering russian reprisals in the form of seizure of assets, fines, etc.
Divesting their assets in Russia entirely is difficult when putin has made it extremely costly to do so, more costly than any likely loss of profit and stock value caused by just staying there and minimising things.
It's only when you view things as a sane citizen of the world that it looks horrible. Even then, you don't see a big outcry from other places to abandon ship here in the states, or up in Canada (there's a current power flux there), in England, or pretty much anywhere. Russia is only drawing heat because they made their moves so big and obvious. Literal war draws attention in a way that even the human rights violations of China and the US don't.
Even that is linked more to Russia and Ukraine being so close to the EU. You don't see as much heat directed at actions taken by smaller countries further away. NATO and the EU vs Russia is big news because it's massively dangerous on a global scale. But, what's happening isn't unusual or rare, it's just more likely to spill over.
So, nobody is going hard at their capitalist cronies and putting real pressure on them to pull out entirely.
I was curious too. It looks like all of the sanctions are for inports from russia, and freezing russian assets that are not in russia. There are a lot of companies that have pulled operations from Russia, but there doesn't seem to be any requirement to do so.