Corporations paying top executives personal income taxes

Corporations paying top executives personal income taxes, paper finds

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Corporations_paying_top_executives_personal_income_1222.html

Like most Americans, rank-and-file employees of Home Depot Inc. must reach into their own pockets to pay taxes, the WALL STREET JOURNAL begins on Thursday page ones. Excerpts follow (full paid-restricted article here.)

But not Robert Nardelli, the home-improvement retailer's chief executive. Under his employment contract, Home Depot picks up a big chunk of his federal and state income taxes. Specifically, the company is obliged to reimburse its CEO for taxes due on a slew of perks, including a high-end luxury car, his family's travel on Home Depot jets and forgiveness of a $10 million loan. Last year, these payments amounted to at least $3.3 million, topping Mr. Nardelli's $2 million base salary.

Amid soaring CEO compensation, a number of companies are paying extra sums to cover executives' personal tax bills. Many companies are paying taxes due on core elements of executive pay, such as stock grants, signing bonuses and severance packages. Others are reimbursing taxes on corporate perquisites, which are treated as income by the Internal Revenue Service. They run the gamut from personal travel aboard corporate jets to country-club memberships and shopping excursions.

"This smacks of Leona Helmsley-like treatment, that only little people pay taxes," says Patrick McGurn, an executive vice president of Institutional Shareholder Services Inc., an influential adviser to big investors that often critiques companies' corporate-governance practices. For these top executives, he says, companies "are removing taxes from the list of inevitable life experiences, leaving only death."



"What a great lookin' group of people...the "haves" and the "have mores." Some call you the elite...I call you my BASE."

Hope he has a really good tax attorney, or a Congressman or two. That's income, not a reimbursement.

Yea, yea, I know, it's a "private corporation," but still, when the corporate pays perks like this, the money has to come from somewhere such as from the sale of it products which are priced in such a way that perks like this can be paid.

I'm always amazed at how people perceive government as "spending their money," yet, for some reason, a corporation is exempt from scrutiny has to how it spends it's money. Probably because corporations are perceived to be "private." But just imagine how much less their product/services would cost if corporations were truly concerned about frivolous expenses.

For example, my stepfather use to rant on an on for decades about advertising. He maintained that products would cost much less if billions of dollars weren't spent each year trying to get us to buy them. The same holds true for outlandish CEO salaries, bonuses, and perks such as this one.

It's additional income, for which he'd have to pay additional taxes, get additional reimbursements (income), additional taxes, and so on and so on and so on...

WTF!?! It can't be legal for them to pay his taxes and have it NOT counted as income. Can it?

and as such is taxable.

So he should, according to tax law, pay income tax on that 3.3 million that the company pays on his behalf.

So I guess the company can step in and pay THAT for him. Okay, so when it steps in and pays THAT for him, its payment of that for him = income, on which he must pay income tax.

with tax evasion.

dp

I'd do that job for 150k and be thrilled to have it.

Hey Home Depot, I don't need a jet or my taxes reimbursed, I don't even need forgiveness on a 10 million dollar loan. I don't even need to be rich, I just need to be comfortable in life.

How may people a year could you hire on this CEO's salary?

Perhaps it not unions or american workers need for decent wages and health care that is the problem but CEO salaries and bennies.
After all it's the ants that make that company work not the queen bee how lays around and gets fat on the work of others.

Just saying is all, seems greedy and absurd to me.

The people responsible for this should be flogged within an inch of their lives. There is no end to the venality and selfishness of the have mores. Time for pitchforks, torches and maybe this:



edited for spelling