Why Communities Are Standing Up

To date, Verizon has refused to deploy its FiOS network in a number of large—and medium-sized—cities in its landline footprint, including Boston, Baltimore, Buffalo, Albany, and Syracuse, among others and has made it clear that it has no intention of further investments in FiOS in these or rural areas. People of color and lower-income households will be disproportionately affected. Given the critical importance of high-speed Internet to economic development, job creation, improvements in education, health care, energy conservation, and public safety, these communities must not be left on the wrong side of the digital divide.

While Verizon has been making billions of dollars, awarding outrageous pay to top executives, trying to cut workers benefits and outsourcing and offshoring jobs, they’ve also been getting government benefits.

Verizon exploited loopholes to pay nothing in federal corporate income taxes between 2008 and 2010, but worse: they’ve actually gotten tax rebates of nearly $1 billion from the U.S. Treasury.

• Verizon’s 2010 effective federal income tax rate: NEGATIVE 5.9%
• Verizon’s 2009 effective federal income tax rate: NEGATIVE 5.0%2

And that’s not all: Citizens for Tax Justice has documented that Verizon Communications has received $180 million in special tax breaks and grants from 13 states, and they regularly seek deep property tax discounts.

Who pays? The rest of us do. Critical services go underfunded, the public debt load goes up, and individuals pay more.

Perhaps worse, these massive subsidies didn’t lead to higher employment, better wages for workers or higher investment, as companies so often promise they will. Instead, Verizon shed 40,600 jobs the past three years, is demanding more than $1 billion in wage and benefit concessions from workers, & decreased capital expenditures by $1 billion.