Multinational Companies Power Essays - Taxation, Free Essays

Multinational Companies Power Essays - Taxation, Free Essays Multinational Companies Power In what ways do multinational companies exercise significant power over the US government UG COURSEWORK COVERSHEET School of Politics and International Relations 0Please check this box if you are happy for your work to be used as an exemplar for future students. Your work will remain anonymous and will be used for guidance only. STUDENT NUMBER: SEMINAR TUTOR: YEAR: FIRST 1 SECOND 0 FINAL 0 ASSOCIATE 0 ERASMUS 0 (check the relevant box with a double-click) MODULE CODE: POL 105 COURSEWORK NUMBER/TITLE: In what ways do multinational companies exercise significant power over the US government? WORD COUNT: 2358 ________________________________________ A First ClassB Upper SecondC Lower SecondD ThirdE DeficientF Fail Task fulfilment Research Quality of Argument Structure Presentation Representation of Sources STRENGTHS: WEAKNESSES: HOW TO IMPROVE: Provisional Mark: ___________ In what ways do multinational companies exercise significant power over the US government? In todays era of globalisation, multinational companies exercise a substantial amount of power influencing the political sphere through campaign funding and lobbying to say the least. For some, this has led to the government representing corporations more than it represents people. Throughout this essay the extent of corporate political influence will be explored assessing in what ways multinational corporations engage in the political process and whether this involvement truly has an effect. As aforementioned the power of multinational corporations over the US government is significant, a key way this can be reflected is through their ability to reduce their tax and in some cases even avoiding tax. There are a number of ways some of the worlds most well-known companies do so, with an end goal of achieving tax-levels which serve their best interest. Some corporations carry out a process of corporate inversion, which involves the relocation of a companys base to a country with low-tax jurisdictions. As a result of this corporations such as Apple have reduced their corporate income tax by an average of $10 billion-a-year for the past four years. This strategy allowed them to pay an effective tax rate of 12.6% one of the lowest among U.S. corporations. Currently corporation tax in the U.S stands at 35% the highest overall rate of any of the worlds developed economies. This contrast in corporation tax undoubtedly indicates the power of MNCs translated through the first dime nsions of power in its simplest form by multinational corporations (A) exercising power over the government (B). This is reflected in that although there are laws in place multinational corporations bypass and circumvent these laws. Their economic power provides them with the means to establish more favourable conditions for their company to prosper, ultimately maximising their profits. In this context the power of MNCs over the US government is prominent in that their superior economic resources puts them in a position to exploit the existing tax loopholes for corporate benefit. Nonetheless this can be undermined in that multinational corporations do not possess full exception from tax and that although they may carry out measures to avoid tax; this doesnt go unnoticed by the government. Corporations such as Apple have come under fire from the Senate Subcommittee; with the investigations chairman Carl Levin coming to a conclusion that Apple used a complex web of offshore entities to avoid paying billions of dollars in US income taxes. Additionally the Obama administration has also undertaken measures to curtail tax inversion. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew passed a bill which would significantly diminish the ability of inverted companies to escape U.S. taxation. As a result this clearly indicates that the government retains power as they continue to exercise authority over such corporations ensuring that legal jurisdictions are followed. It ultimately challenges the view that multinationals have vast amount of power which allows the government to disregard thei r tax avoidance. However this doesnt weaken the fact that multinational corporations still possess a significant amount of power over the government in regards to taxation. Due to corporate inversions and other forms of tax avoidance by multinationals, they have forced the US government to form a debate about the current levels of corporation tax and what type of action should be taken to subvert corporate inversions. President Barack Obama's 2015 budget proposed making inversions harder to do by raising the foreign ownership required. Congressional Democrats have made similar proposals. This influence over the US government can be expressed through the second dimension of power.

Rujm el-Hiri (Golan Heights) - Ancient Observatory

Rujm el-Hiri (Golan Heights) - Ancient Observatory Sixteen kilometers east of the Sea of Galilee in the western part of the historic Bashan plain of the Golan Heights (a contested area claimed by both Syria and Israel) are the ruins of a most unusual structure, which scholars believe was built at least in part for archaeoastronomical purposes. Located at 515 meters above sea level, Rujm el-Hiri consists of a central cairn with a set of concentric rings encircling it. Built during the late Chalcolithic or Early Bronze Age about 5000 years ago, Rujm el-Hiri (also called Rogem Hiri or Gilgal Rephaim) is made of an estimated 40,000 tons of uncut black volcanic basalt field stones piled and wedged into between five and nine concentric rings (depending on how you count them), with heights reaching to 1 to 2.5 meters (3-8 feet) high. Nine Rings at Rujm el-Hiri The outermost, largest ring (Wall 1) measures 145 meters (475 feet) east-west and 155 m (500 ft) north-south. The wall measures consistently between 3.2-3.3 m (10.5-10.8 ft) thick, and in places stands up to 2 m (6 ft) in height. Two openings into the ring are currently blocked by fallen boulders: the northeastern measures some 29 m (95 ft) wide; the southeastern opening measures 26 m (85 ft). Not all of the internal rings are complete; some of them are more oval than Wall 1, and in particularly, Wall 3 has a pronounced bulge to the south. Some of the rings are connected by a series of 36 spoke-like walls, which make up chambers, and seem to be randomly spaced. At the center of the innermost ring is a cairn protecting a burial; the cairn and burial come after the initial construction of the rings by perhaps as long as 1500 years. The cairn is an irregular stone heap measuring some 20-25 m (65-80 ft) in diameter and 4.5-5 m (15-16 ft) in height. Dating the Site Very few artifacts have been recovered from Rujm el-Hiri, and no suitable organic materials have been recovered for radiocarbon dating. Based on what little artifacts were recovered, the earliest constructions were the rings during the Early Bronze Age, of the 3rd millennium BC; the cairn was built during the late Bronze Age of the late 2nd millennium. The huge structure (and a series of dolmens nearby) may be the origin of the myths of the ancient race of giants, mentioned in the Old Testament of the Judeo-Christian bible as led by Og, King of the Bashan. Archaeologists Yonathan Mizrachi and Anthony Aveni, studying the structure since the late 1980s, have another possible interpretation: a celestial observatory. Summer Solstice at Rujm el Hiri Recent work by Aveni and Mizrachi has noted that the entranceway to the center opens on sunrise of the summer solstice. Other notches in the walls indicate the spring and fall equinoxes. Excavations into the walled chambers did not recover artifacts indicating that the rooms were ever used either for storage or residence. Calculations of when the astronomical alignments would have matched stars supports the dating of the rings at having been built at about 3000 BC /- 250 years. The walls at Rujm el-Hiri seem to have pointed to star-risings for the period, and may have been predictors of the rainy season, a crucial bit of information for the sheep herders of the Bashan plain in 3000 BC. Sources This glossary entry is a part of the About.com guide to Astronomical Observatories, and the Dictionary of Archaeology. Aveni, Anthony and Yonathan Mizrachi 1998 The Geometry and Astronomy of Rujm el-Hiri, a Megalithic Site in the Southern Levant. Journal of Field Archaeology 25(4):475-496. Polcaro A, and Polcaro VF. 2009. Man and sky: problems and methods of Archaeoastronomy. Archeologia e Calcolatori 20:223-245. Neumann F, Schà ¶lzel C, Litt T, Hense A, and Stein M. 2007. Holocene vegetation and climate history of the northern Golan heights (Near East). Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 16(4):329-346.