When confronted with corporate criminal behavior, the Justice Department has often chosen to impose fines rather than to pursue other criminal prosecution. Examples include banks laundering drug money, fatal ignition defects in cars, cheating on air pollution standards, and the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster.
These fines have resulted in billions of dollars in judgments against corporations. Yet much of these penalties are in fact never paid but are written off as corporate expenses.
If corporations reduce their tax burden in this way, the rest of us must make up the deficit. This is unjust.
Penalties for corporate malfeasance should be borne entirely by the owners of the corporations, not by ordinary citizens. The tax code should be changed to prohibit this ongoing injustice.