We retired Tax Justice Blog in April 2017. For new content on issues related to tax justice, go to www.justtaxesblog.org
Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been doing a lot of media interviews lately, and when the editors at Politico wrote up their sit-down with the GOP nominee, they characterized Romney’s answers to their questions as “the clearest window yet into how the lessons he gained in the corporate world would be applied to the presidency.
So what did he say? Romney told Politico “I learned leadership by watching people,” and named J.W. “Bill” Marriott, a fellow Mormon and the CEO of the hotel chain of the same name, as one of the people from whom he’s learned a lot about leadership. He put Marriott right up there with his mentor, Bill Bain.
While we can’t speak to Bill Marriott’s management style, we can tell you that during his 40-year tenure as CEO of Marriott International, the company engaged in aggressive tax avoiding – so aggressive that it later got them into trouble with the IRS.
The company used a tax shelter known as “Son of BOSS,” generating capital losses that a federal court deemed “fictitious,” “artificial” and a “scheme.” The government criminally prosecuted the promoters of this particular tax shelter and people are now serving federal prison sentences for it. In fact Romney himself, as a member of Marriott’s audit board, most likely signed off on this tax evasion strategy. The company has used other aggressive tax planning vehicles, too, even claiming a questionable tax credit for synthetic fuels.
Marriott also shows an ever-increasing ability to shift and shelter its profits offshore. While 3,122 of its 3,718 hotel properties are in the United States, the company pays more income tax in foreign jurisdictions than in the US, even though the majority of its profits must surely be generated here.
Marriott has over a hundred subsidiaries in known tax haven countries. For example, while it has only one hotel in the Cayman Islands, Marriott has 15 subsidiary companies there. And in Luxembourg, where it has nine subsidiaries but zero hotels, Marriott uses one of its subsidiaries to collect royalties on its various brand names which the US cannot tax.
Does Romney admire and endorse these kinds of shenanigans? Hard to say for sure. But given his widely recognized use of some pretty aggressive (though legal, far as we know) strategies to avoid paying his personal taxes, we now have a glimpse into the values that inform his views on corporate tax policy. We are beginning to sense a pattern in this presidential candidate, and it looks a little like disdain for our nation’s tax laws.