Warren at Work for the People

Last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced a bill with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) that aims to make government settlements with corporations more transparent and fair.

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When banks and other corporations are accused of breaking the law, the government often settles cases instead of going to trial.

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Warren's bill would discourage tax-deductible settlements by forcing federal agencies to explain why certain settlements are confidential, and to publicly disclose the terms of non-confidential agreements so that taxpayers can see how much settlement tax-deductibility is costing them.

  Mother Jones

Of course, there is no telling what the end results of a trial might have been.  I'm sure it would cost the taxpayers to take these cases to trial.  But maybe the taxpayers need better lawyers who can win these kinds of cases and collect large penalties, rather than settling them and collecting only half of the settlement.

And, should the public care enough to do anything about it, here are some examples of tax write-offs in recent settlements:

Company	Violation	Settlement	Tax Write Off
JPMorgan	selling dicy financial products	$13 billion	$4 billion
BP	Gulf oil spill disaster	$20 billion	$10 billion
HSBC	money laundering	$1.9 billion	$700 million
Exxon	Alaska oil spill	$1.1 billion	$576 million
Marsh & McLennan	bid-rigging	$850 million	$298 million