Treasury Nominee and Corporate Taxes

So, we find that CSX Corp., which President Bush’s soon-to-be Treasury Secretary John Snow headed, didn’t pay taxes for two out of the last four years (Dec. 11). The real crime seems to be not the forgiven loan of Snow’s for $24 million for a stock deal that didn’t work out or his selling of stocks just before financial problems arose, but that a company making a pretax profit of over a billion dollars not only doesn’t owe taxes but, actually, in some cases, got money back!

The defenders of CSX and Snow said the taxes avoided and deferred were perfectly legal. I don’t doubt that they were, but how did something like this, so business-biased, get to be legal? Are the people in our country who actually work and pay their taxes the last of the “suckers”?

Larry Margo

Valley Village