In a Tax Day opinion piece at USAToday.com, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., writes that the ongoing exploitation of tax loopholes by large, profitable corporations has “helped shift the tax burden onto American families and small businesses, and … added billions of dollars to the budget deficit.”

As chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Levin has spent more than a decade exposing corporate tax loopholes such as the use of offshore tax havens to avoid taxes. He authored legislation, the CUT Loopholes Act, to combat some of the worst tax loopholes.

Today millions of Americans take part in an annual ritual of filing their income taxes. The willingness of millions of families to plod through this ritual rests in part on the understanding that their burden is shared. Today, though, some of us are bearing a higher burden than ever, while others, particularly our most profitable corporations, sometimes pay no tax at all.

From 2008 to 2010, 30 of the most profitable large corporations paid no federal income tax. None. While the top federal income tax rate for corporations is a relatively high 35%, the effective tax rate for U.S. corporations -- the tax they actually pay -- is less than 15%. I suspect most of the families scrambling today to get their taxes done would love to get that kind of tax cut, let alone the pay nothing, as many large companies do.

This gap between the tax rate on paper and what corporations actually pay has helped drive a huge shift in the tax burden from corporations to American families. In 2011, individuals paid about $6 in income taxes for every dollar that corporations paid. In 1980, the ratio was less than 4-to-1.

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Over 130 people were led away and ticketed by police in Chicago as thousands of teachers, parents and students protested against a decision to close 54 public schools. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has refused further negotiations, apparently making the closings a done deal.

Via:

CTU President Karen Lewis was cheered when she took the microphone at Daley Plaza late Wednesday afternoon and repeated her argument that the Chicago Public Schools' decision to close schools with predominantly African-American enrollments is racist.

"Let's not pretend that when you close schools on the South and West sides, the children affected aren't black," Lewis said. "Let's not pretend that's not racist."

In an event rife with political symbolism, the size of the crowd was anybody's guess. The official police estimate was 700 to 900 people, according to the department's news affairs office. A CTU spokeswoman said the union was "appalled" by the department's number, saying between 5,000 and 6,500 were on hand.

Those at the protest were loud but disciplined, sticking to a script the CTU provided earlier in the day in a news release. Most of the vitriol was aimed at Emanuel, with protesters carrying signs included "Rahm's brain is underutilized" and "School Closings = One Term Mayor."

127 protesters were led away peacefully by police after sitting in the street at the intersection of Washington and LaSalle outside City Hall. Their hands were behind their backs, but not handcuffed. Despite earlier warnings from CTU that the protesters would "risk arrest," police made a point of noting that 127 people were issued tickets on site, and not arrested.

The district says that the 54 schools slated for closure are "underenrolled," and need to be shut to deal with a $1 billion dollar deficit.