Public Comment

Paltry Fast Food Pay Nicks Taxpayers

By Tejinder Uberoi
Friday December 06, 2013 - 12:39:00 PM

As fast-food workers in about 150 cities are walking off the job in a coordinated effort to demand higher wages, a new report published by the Institute for Policy Studies entitled, "Fast Food CEOs Rake In Taxpayer-Subsidized Pay," exposes that these CEOs have saved billions of dollars paying their workers near starvation wages while further buttressing their own pay with government subsidized dollars. Incredibly, a perverse loophole in the tax code allows companies to deduct the cost of performance-based executive pay. 

For example, the CEO of Yum! Brands that runs, KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut chains raked in $94 million of this so-called performance pay in the last two years granting the parent company a whopping of $33 million in tax benefits. Research has clearly shown how the rules that govern this performance based pay can easily be rigged even if the CEO’s have performed badly. 

This obscene tax giveaway comes on the heel of another report that demonstrates the extreme hardship endured by fast-food workers.; more than have to rely on public assistance to survive. Many food outlets are acutely aware of these hardships and encourage their workers to seek additional employment and seek public assistance. It is time we acted in solidarity with these low paid workers and boycotted these fast food scrooge franchises. Also, I urge readers to contact their Rip-Van-Winkle legislators and demand that this obscene ‘performance pay’ tax perk be revoked.