Jan 14, 2025

Good Tax Planning

    From Urban Milwaukee:

2020 was a profitable year for Fiserv, the financial services company located in Brookfield. The company earned $1.1 billion in pre-tax earnings on revenue of $14.85 billion.

Even better, it paid not a dollar in federal taxes on those earnings.

Still better, it actually got a tax rebate from the IRS, of $25 million, increasing its net income for the year.

    As you will recall, Frank Bisignano, who has been nominated to become Commissioner of Social Security, is CEO of Fiserv.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why would anybody be surprised? It’s going to be a long four years but elections have consequences.

Anonymous said...

Apparently the Urban Milwaukee rag has never heard of net operating loss carry forward deductions. Wise planning.

Anonymous said...

Fine. But is it really just all fair and cool that massive businesses that reap disproportionate benefits from government spending get to externalize their business losses while people busting their butts 60 hours a week for a pittance can‘t even deduct more than a tiny fraction of expenses for things like childcare? These people are getting a massive handout that essentially insulates their business from risk while the rest of us get screwed up the rear.

Anonymous said...

Privatize the profits and socialize the losses, the true American way!!

Anonymous said...

How much did the company contribute in Social Security taxes for the thousands of employees it employed in 2020?

Anonymous said...

Look I hate it too but it's true. Fiserv hires 42,000 employees, so almost the size of Social Security. Many have been made millionaires. Others have been used and churned out. Such is life.

Anonymous said...

Probably around the same amount as any very large employer. I don't think the company gets extra points for that.

Anonymous said...

Probably far less than most employers of their size given their heavy classification of staff as independent contractors rather than employees. Nice effort to try and paint the tax cheats as heroes, though! And enjoy continuing to get screwed by rich tax cheats in the coming years!

Anonymous said...

@8:52 Fiserv has had big layoffs since our new SSA Commissioner took over. He is widely hated by employees for arbitrary non-performance related layoffs, ending telework, and implementing very intrusive "big brother" software that tracks every key stroke. He drove away their top talent and long-term employees for the sake of short-term stock gains. Reddit has quite a few threads documenting his problematic tenure. He is the perfect pick for Commissioner if the intent is to reduce SSA's workforce without direct layoffs/firings.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Fiserv-Reviews-E1384.htm

Anonymous said...

lol “employees” like they are equivalent to independent contractors that they really are.

Anonymous said...

Exactly. When the CEO of Boeing tanked that company for short-term stock price gains, he was pilloried. But when it’s a Trump acolyte tanking a company, they’re praised and elevated to cabinet level positions. The cognitive dissonance is literally boundless among those people.