Conservatives in several states, as we’ve been documenting, have moved in recent months to reduce their state corporate taxes at the same time that they’ve proposed raising taxes on low-income families and cutting services upon which their most vulnerable citizens depend. Last week, Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) lost his fight to eliminate Florida’s corporate income tax, in the highest-profile defeat the corporate tax-cutters have suffered yet.

However, Gov. Rick Snyder (R-MI) has been far more successful in getting his tax package through. Yesterday, in fact, the Michigan legislature approved Snyder’s plan, with some slight modifications, by narrow margins in both the state House and state Senate:

For months, Governor Rick Snyder has been trying desperately to enact massive business tax cuts paid for with new taxes on pension income and the elimination of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Unfortunately, a modified version of Snyder’s plan passed both houses of the state legislature yesterday and is now on its way to the Governor’s desk, where it will soon be signed into law…In the end, the most notable change to occur in the Senate was the reintroduction of the EITC, set at a level equal to 6 percent of the federal credit. Given that Michigan’s current EITC is equal to 20 percent of the federal credit, this change will still result in a steep tax hike on low-income families.

This amounts to an 86 percent cut in the state’s corporate income tax, exempting nearly 100,000 businesses from paying any corporate income tax at all, combined with a two-thirds reduction in the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit (which goes to benefit low-income families). (Snyder originally wanted to eliminate the state’s EITC entirely.) As state Sen. Rebekah Warren (D) said, the plan represents a “significant tax shift” from business to those “who are the least among us.”

Adding insult to injury, there’s little guarantee that Snyder’s corporate tax cut will lead to job creation. Snyder himself confessed that “I can’t guarantee results.” State Sen. Jack Brandenburg (R) added that “there’s no guarantee that the tax cuts for businesses will generate a lot more jobs.” “The results are likely to be very disappointing,” said Timothy Bartik, senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Since the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced last month that it is launching a complaint against airline-manufacturer Boeing for potential union-busting, Republicans have been in an uproar. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) likened the NLRB to “thugs” from “a third-world country.” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), meanwhile, said that the case is evidence the Obama administration has an “enemies list.”

Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) — whose state would have been the beneficiary of Boeing’s union-busting — said this week that “I’d like to see every [potential GOP 2012 presidential] candidate step up [and say] what they would do about it.” 2012 Republican hopeful Tim Pawlenty, when he was participating in a debate in South Carolina, did just that, calling the board’s decision “preposterous” and “outrageous.”

Yesterday was 2012 contender Mitt Romney’s turn, as he took a brief aside in his highly-anticipated health care speech to call the NLRB’s decision a “power grab” proving that the Obama administration “fundamentally distrusts free enterprise”:

The states, in the words of Justice Brandeis, would be the laboratories of democracy. They would try things. They would learn from one another. They would also compete with one another. So the same dynamic that would propel our economy — competition and freedom — would propel learning between the states…I’m convinced, however, that the Obama administration fundamentally doesn’t believe in that American experiment. They fundamentally distrust free enterprise and fundamentally distrust the idea that states are where the power of government resides. The most recent decision was the one made by the NLRB, to decide that Boeing can’t locate a factory in South Carolina. It was a power grab from states, with the federal government saying we know better than states.

Watch it:

To, once again, review what happened, Boeing, in 2007, announced a production line in Washington state, but in 2009 decided to move that line to South Carolina. Boeing officials very publicly explained that the decision was made because workers in Washington had engaged in a strike. According to labor law, shifting production as retribution against workers who exercise their rights is illegal.

As the Washington Post’s Steve Pearlstein wrote, “given the public statements of Boeing officials, there is nothing radical about the NLRB’s decision.” A lawyer who described himself as sympathetic to management told the Seattle Times, “If I’m [Boeing's] labor lawyer, I’m cringing when they are saying that.” But the GOP is treating this as some unprecedented assault on freedom, rather than an agency just enforcing the laws on the books and ensuring that workers don’t have their rights trampled by corporations.

On Tuesday, tech giant Microsoft announced to the world that it would be purchasing Internet communication service Skype in an all-cash, $8.5 billion acquisition deal.

One fact that has gone underreported about the deal is how Microsoft structured it to keep its taxes as low as possible. As the Wall Street Journal’s Ronald Barusch notes, Microsoft and Skype saved billions of dollars in taxes because Microsoft used its foreign profits to purchase Skype, which also happens to base its corporate headquarters in a major tax haven itself, Luxembourg.

Doing so allowed Microsoft to avoid paying taxes on its profits at the U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent. So how much does Microsoft pay on the profits it makes overseas in tax havens based in places like Ireland, Bermuda, and Singapore? To find the answer, we can turn to the University of Southern California’s Edward D. Kleinbard. In a paper titled “Stateless Income,” Kleinbard analyzed Microsoft’s overseas earnings. Kleinbard noted that in 2010, Microsoft has $29.5 billion in earnings overseas, and that the tax cost of these earnings if they were brought back to the U.S. would be $9.2 billion:

For example, Microsoft Corporation’s Financial Statements in its 2010 Annual Report indicated that the company has $29.5 billion in “permanently reinvested earnings” outside the United States (that is, after foreign-tax earnings of foreign subsidiaries that Microsoft does not currently intend to repatriate to the United States). Microsoft also noted that the tax cost of repatriating those earnings to the United States would be $9.2 billion.

The $9.2 billion would amount to paying a rate of 31 percent. The missing four percent would come from foreign tax credits — meaning, the taxes the company paid overseas. That means the effective corporate income tax rate for Microsoft for its overseas profits is a paltry 4 percent — almost 9 times lower than the U.S. corporate income tax rate. In its last quarterly statement, Microsoft noted that “$42 billion of its $50.2 billion in cash and short term investments was held by its foreign subsidiaries.”

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft is part of a coalition of companies advocating for a repatration tax holiday, which would allow them to bring money they have stashed offshore back to the U.S. at a dramatically lower tax rate.

But Microsoft isn’t the only company involved in the acquisition that has been getting a sweet deal with overseas profits. As stated before, Skype’s office is based in Luxembourg. The effective corporate income tax rate in Luxembourg? 0.4 percent (See “The Revenue Effects of Multinational Firm Income Shifting, Kimberly Clausing). MarketWatch’s Therese Poletti notes that Skype’s financial disclosures show “dizzying array of offshore entities and holding companies associated with its biggest investors.” The private equity firm Silver Lake, which owns 39 percent stake in Skype, is also a major tax dodger. “Two of the three Silver Lake Funds which own shares in Skype are based” in the Cayman Islands and George Town in the caribbean. eBay, which “retained a 30% stake in Skype, giving investors a return of about $1.4 billion,” uses eBay International AG unit for its Skype ownership. Despite being an American company, this unit is based in Bern, Switzerland.

While many in the financial world are unsure of the results of the recent acquisition, there is clearly one group that won’t be benefitting: U.S. taxpayers who will continue to watch supposedly “American” businesses exploit the tax code and set up tax havens to avoid paying taxes in our country.

Seth Hanlon, the Director of Fiscal Reform for the Center for American Project’s Doing What Works initiative, contributed to this post.