That’s how much in income tax breaks U.S. corporations received in 2011, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

The total refers to so-called tax expenditures — revenue that the federal government foregoes because of exemptions, deductions, credits, deferral or lower tax rates. Lawmakers have discussed an overhaul of the corporate tax code.

About 65 percent of the $181 billion total came from two breaks — accelerated depreciation of machinery and equipment and the deferral of taxes on profits that U.S. corporations earn overseas.

The corporate revenue losses in 2011 “were approximately the same size as the amount of corporate income tax revenue the federal government collected that year,” the GAO report said.

Bloomberg’s Richard Rubin has more here.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: $181 Billion by Political Capital.

The two companies appear on the latest list of contributors.

Obama is also getting financial help from labor unions, including the firefighters, postal workers and electrical workers.

In a reversal of his policies and practices four years ago, Obama is accepting corporate and union donations and keeping the amounts hidden from public view until after the committee is required to report to the Federal Election Commission after the election.
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Original post is FedEx, Coca-Cola Pitch in for Obama by Political Capital.

The American Legislative Exchange Council, a public-policy group that saw an exodus of corporate members after championing self-defense and voter-identification laws, looked at setting up a non-profit arm following allegations of violating its charitable status by lobbying on issues.

The new non-profit, ALEC NOW, would be incorporated under Section 501c4 of the tax code, just like groups like Americans for Prosperity and Crossroads GPS that spent millions of dollars on the 2012 elections without disclosing their donors. The proposal for a new entity was revealed in a group of documents obtained by Bloomberg under the Freedom of Information Act.

Common Cause, a Washington-based watchdog group, accused ALEC in an Internal Revenue Service complaint last April of violating its current tax status by lobbying state legislators.

ALEC is incorporated as a charity under Section 501c3, meaning donations to the group are tax-deductible.

ALEC’s executive director, Ron Scheberle, said in an August memo that a 501c4 “operating fully prior to an IRS audit” could cause the agency to “look favorably” upon the group. “It is a possibility” that the IRS will tell ALEC that the new non-profit should take over some operations, Scheberle said.

The new non-profit would “educate the public on the past, current and future impact of ALEC’s model legislation” and would not lobby nor engage in political activities, Scheberle said in the memo.

ALEC hasn’t set up the affiliate, according to Kaitlyn Buss, a spokeswoman.

“While the American Legislative Exchange Council remains a 501c3 focused on the exchange of practical, state-level public policy issues among its members, we are always open to operational changes that will make us more effective,” Buss said. “However, we have no current plans to operate a 501c4 in the near future.”

Doug Clopp, an attorney for Common Cause, said the discussion of an affiliate is an indication that the group knows it is not a charitable organization.

“It looks like ALEC is covering its tracks,” Clopp said. “These folks are not a charity, they’re not the soup kitchen, they’re not the YMCA. They are, and always have been, aware that their activities are straight-up lobbying.”

Based in Washington, ALEC allows representatives of corporations and interest groups to help draft legislation with state lawmakers, who then try to enact those bills in their home states. Companies pay dues of as much as $25,000 a year.

ALEC this week released its 2013 state legislative priorities and proposed legislation to accomplish them, including ending traditional pensions for newly hired public employees, repealing requirements that utilities buy electricity from environmentally friendly sources, using taxpayer dollars for religious schools, and limiting lawsuits by consumers injured by faulty products.

More than three dozen companies, including General Electric Co., Coca-Cola Co., and Johnson & Johnson, dropped their ALEC memberships earlier this year.

Ben Elgin contributed to this report. 

Original post is ALEC Thought of Non-Profit — Then Thought Not by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mark Wilson/Pool via Bloomberg

President Barack Obama and his wife at the Commander-in-Chief Inaugural Ball in Washington on Jan. 20, 2009.

Written with Joe Sobczyk

President Barack Obama’s inaugural committee will accept unlimited donations from corporations and individuals, reversing his stance of four years ago.

After a presidential campaign that cost more than $2 billion in spending by candidates, political parties and political action committees, the inaugural committee is casting a wider net for contributions.

“Our goal is to make sure that we will meet the fundraising requirements for this civic event after the most expensive presidential campaign in history,” Addie Whisenant, spokeswoman for the Presidential Inaugural Committee, said in an e-mail.

The identities of all donors will be posted regularly on the committee’s website, she said. Lobbyists and political action committees won’t be allowed to contribute. Corporations that accepted but haven’t yet repaid funding from the Troubled Asset Relief Program also will be prohibited from making donations.

Donors contributed about $45 million to Obama’s 2009 inauguration. Obama banned corporate cash then, and accepted a maximum of $50,000 per donor.

The inaugural committee plans to scale down events for Obama’s second inaugural. The formal ceremonies and balls will be held on Jan. 21. Obama will officially take the oath of office the day before, which is a Sunday.

Original post is Obama’s Inauguration: Corporations are People Too, Unlimited Welcome by Political Capital.

And that could cost President Barack Obama or his party some needed campaign cash.

Democrats ended their convention in Charlotte $5 million short of their budget even after being forced to draw down a $10 million line of credit from Duke Energy Corp., according to a Democratic Party fundraiser. That will leave a $15 million bill that eventually will have to be paid by Obama’s campaign or the Democratic National Committee, according to the fundraiser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The Charlotte Host Committee ended the convention with more than $5 million in immediate obligations and may require a direct cash infusion from the Obama campaign to pay vendors, said the fundraiser. The $10 million line of credit to Duke Energy will need to be repaid next year, said a second person familiar with the matter, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. Duke Energy Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jim Rogers is co-chairman of the host committee.

Those debts could siphon off advertising money in the campaign’s final months, as Democrats face a cash disadvantage.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the Republican National Committee and two allied super-political action committees reported a combined bank account balance of $169 million on July 31. That compared with $107 million for Obama, the Democratic National Committee and the pro-Obama super-PAC Priorities USA Action, according to disclosures filed Aug. 20 with the Federal Election Commission.

“It is always easier to raise corporate dollars in advance of a convention because of the visibility and profile that corporate sponsorship can offer,” said Tony Corrado, a professor of government at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, who specializes in campaign finance. “After a convention, once the signs are down and the politicians have left, raising money is a much more difficult task.”

The host committee failed to reach its $36.7 million fundraising goal because the DNC banned direct cash contributions from corporations, which have traditionally underwritten presidential nominating conventions. Republicans didn’t have a similar prohibition for their convention last month in Tampa.

“If they got within five million, considering that they used the line of credit, I think that’s awesome, given the restrictions they had to deal with, ” said Mike Dino, who served as executive director for the host committee in Denver, where Democrats held their nominating convention in 2008. “They should be relieved to be in that range.”

Original post is Democratic Convention Debt Will Cost Obama Campaign or Party Cash by Political Capital.

Photograph by Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

A rally at the Supreme Court to mark the second anniversary of the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission may have overturned a century-old ban on corporations spending money on federal elections.

Yet that 2010 ruling, which also spawned the creation of independent expenditure-only committees known as super-PACs with unlimited fundraising ability, has not opened floodgates to corporate donations as some, including President Barack Obama, predicted.

A Bloomberg Government study finds that corporate money has largely stayed out of the 2012 election cycle so far, including the Republican presidential nominating process. Corporations contributed only 7.6 percent of the donations to super-PACs between December 2011 and March 2012.

The study by BGov analyst Melissa Avstreih  also finds that almost all of the $6.82 million in corporate donations came from privately owned companies.

Individuals, not corporations, are the major contributors to super-PACs.

This study doesn’t examine corporate contributions made to nonprofit groups registered as 501(c)4 organizations, which are exempt from disclosing the identity of their donors.

Original post is Super-PACs: Little From Corporations by Political Capital.

Photograph by Shawn Thew/EPA

Protesters planned to 'occupy' the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as courthouses across the country, in a show of protest against the two-year anniversary of the controversial Citizens United ruling.

While the Supreme Court has opened a floodgate of contributions to committees promoting or opposing candidates, a federal appeals court says the prohibition against corporations contributing directly to candidates remains:

As Bloomberg’s Tom Schoenberg reports, a three-judge appeals panel in Richmond, Virginia, made its ruling today in reinstating a criminal campaign-finance charge against two fundraisers for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid who were indicted for improperly reimbursing $186,600 to donors.

U.S. District Judge James Cacheris had thrown out a charge that the two illegally funneled corporate money to the campaign, ruling that the high court’s 2010 Citizens United decision meant companies can make campaign donations directly to candidates as long as they comply with general legal limits. The appeals court judges disagreed.

“Leaping to this conclusion ignores the well-established principle that independent expenditures and direct contributions are subject to different standards of scrutiny and supported by different government interests,” U.S. Circuit Judge Roger Gregory wrote for the panel.

See the full report at Bloomberg.com.

Original post is Corporations: Hands-Off Candidates by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Donations to the Orange County Liberty Counsel in Florida.

If there was any doubt about the Supreme Court’s stance on Citizens United — the ruling that opened a floodgate of big donations to political campaigns — that was removed today.

Without even holding any arguments on the case, the court today summarily reversed a Montana Supreme Court decision that had upheld a state ban against corporate contributions to political campaigns.

The high court effectively affirmed its 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission which allowed unlimited corporate and union contributions to campaigns and  unleashed a new breed of so-called super-PACs that are spending tens of millions of dollars supporting and opposing candidates in the 2012 elections.

More than 600 super-PACs have raised more than $240 million and spent $133 million this election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.

The Montana Supreme Court had ruled that Citizens United didn’t apply to its state-level restrictions. The Supreme Court put a hold on the Montana law in February.

At the time of the Citizens United ruling, 22 states had laws banning or restricting spending by corporations and unions according to a report this month by the Corporate Reform Coalition, made up of 75 organizations and individuals from good-governance groups, environmental groups and organized labor. Those states either repealed their limits or declared that their laws are unenforceable, according to the report.

The money spent by super-PACs this cycle  has far surpassed what outside groups had spent in the 2008 campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Among the notable donors, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., and his family gave $21.5 million to a super-PAC supporting the failed Republican presidential candidacy of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Bill Maher, the comedian and television personality, gave $1 million to a similar group backing Obama.

Restore Our Future, which promotes Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and opposes President Obama, raised $61.5 million and spent $53.1 million through May, the most among super-PACs, according to reports with the Federal Election Commission. American Crossroads, a super-PAC with ties to Republican strategist Karl Rove that’s working to defeat Obama and elect Republicans to the House and Senate, raised $34.5 million and spent $5.8 million through May.

Priorities USA Action, a pro-Obama super-PAC run by former White House aides, raised $14.6 million and spent $10.1 million.

Bloomberg’s Julie Bykowicz and Greg Giroux contributed to this report. 

Original post is Supreme Court Doubles the Money by Political Capital.

Photograph by Bryan Oller/AP Photo

The stairway leading from Air Force One is readied for the arrival of President Barack Obama at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., on May 23, 2012.

The Iowa state fairgrounds are hallowed ground on the presidential campaign trail, a place where candidates courting caucus-goers traditionally take a turn on the local newspaper’s soap box.

This is where Mitt Romney, campaigning for president last summer, famously asserted that “corporations are people.”

President Obama plans a stop for a campaign rally at the fairgrounds  in Des Moines this evening, after touring a company in the wind-power business in Newton, Iowa.

So the Obama campaign was rough and ready this morning with a video replaying Romney’s comments on corporations at the fairgrounds on Aug. 11.

Talking about his reluctance to raise taxes on business, Romney said, “Corporations are people, my friend… of course they are… Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people…. Where do you think it goes?” Romney asked the crowd. Their pockets, came the reply.

“Whose pockets? People’s pockets.”

In the world of rapid campaign video response, the Romney camp might want to cost out the expense of the president’s ride home from his clean-energy promotion in Iowa today. The four-engine jumbo jet known as Air Force One when the president is aboard costs $179,750 per hour to operate, according to the Congressional Research Service.

In the most optimum circumstances, a Boeing 747 gets about one mile to five gallons.

Original post is Romney’s Corporation People, Obama’s Air Force One by Political Capital.