Are We the People the boss of the corporations, or are the corporations the boss of We the People? The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) needs to be reminded which way that question is supposed to be answered.

The SEC is the agency set up by We the People to "protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation." The SEC states that "all investors, whether large institutions or private individuals, should have access to certain basic facts about an investment prior to buying it, and so long as they hold it. ... Only through the steady flow of timely, comprehensive, and accurate information can people make sound investment decisions."

One would think those basic corporate facts and timely, comprehensive, and accurate information needed by investors would include access to a company's tax returns. One would think they would include information about where the executives of the company are spending millions and millions of the company's dollars. And one would think they would include disclosure of the ratio of CEO "pay ratio" of compensation to worker compensation, as required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law.

But so far the SEC is not asking corporations to provide investors and the public with this information. Don't shareholders -- and We the People -- deserve to know what these companies are really doing and how much they are really making?

What Are These Companies Really Earning?

Companies tell their investors that they are making tons of money. But to get out of paying taxes the same companies tell the IRS something entirely different. Don't investors have a right to know what the companies they invest in are telling the tax office?

Last month Catherine Rampell wrote in the Washington Post, in "Shareholders, public deserve tax transparency," that:

“[There is an] array of eye-glazingly complicated tax avoidance strategies adopted by America’s biggest companies … The basic rationale behind tax transparency is that shareholders (and creditors and the general public) deserve to know what publicly traded companies are doing, particularly if complicated tax acrobatics are distorting their operational and investment decisions.”

She points out that we started out requiring this.

This is not a new idea. In fact, when the modern federal corporate income tax was introduced in 1909, it came with a requirement to disclose the returns. Such transparency mandates were fought over bitterly for the next couple of decades, and U.S. returns have been confidential since 1935.

What About Company "Donations"?

If a company's executives are literally giving the company's money away to politicians, "charities" (maybe run by a relative), "think tanks" (that employ relatives, etc.) or other worthy recipients,  shouldn't investors be provided with information about who is getting the company's money, and how much they are getting? (Milton Friedman notably claimed that such donations are "theft" from the company.)

(Note: If a company gives money to a politician, and is not simply "giving the money away" for nothing -- with absolutely no expectation of getting anything in return -- that would be bribery,  under the law.)

Last week in The Nation Zoë Carpenter wrote about this in, "SEC Faces Renewed Pressure to Consider a Corporate Disclosure Rule":

The campaign to lift the veil on secret corporate campaign donations hit a milestone on Thursday. More than 1 million comments have been submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission calling for a requirement that corporations disclose political spending to their shareholders—ten times more than for any other rule-making petition to the SEC, according to the Corporate Reform Coalition.

“Investors want to know how their money is being spent,” Tim Smith, director of shareholder engagement at the firm Walden Asset Management, said at a press conference outside the SEC in Washington. A sign over his right shoulder read, “Your money is being invested in secret. Why is the SEC doing nothing?”

Why Is SEC Sitting On These Rules?

So why is the SEC just sitting on these proposals to disclose basic information to shareholders? In the case of the CEO pay ratio, this is even required by a law passed almost 5 years ago.

Could it be that the people working at the SEC really do know who is the boss now? ("Boss" as in the writer of the big paycheck and future employer.) Maybe, and maybe not. Who's to say?

In early 2013 the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) released it report, "Dangerous Liaisons: Revolving Door at SEC Creates Risk of Regulatory Capture":

A revolving door blurs the lines between one of the nation’s most important regulatory agencies and the interests it regulates. Former employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) routinely help corporations try to influence SEC rulemaking, counter the agency’s investigations of suspected wrongdoing, soften the blow of SEC enforcement actions, block shareholder proposals, and win exemptions from federal law. POGO’s report examines many manifestations of the revolving door, analyzes how the revolving door can influence the SEC, and explores how to mitigate the most harmful effects.

At the time of the report's release Bloomberg reported,

From 2001 to 2010, POGO says, more than 400 SEC alumni filed about 2,000 disclosure forms (which POGO obtained using the Freedom of Information Act) saying they planned to represent an employer before the SEC. That may vastly understate the problem because, as POGO points out, former SEC employees must file such statements for only two years after departing.

The SEC has exempted some senior employees (even sometimes blacking out their names on SEC documents) from a one-year cooling-off period during which they are barred from representing clients before the agency, POGO found.

Soon after the report was released: April, 2013, Ex-SEC chief Schapiro takes revolving door back to private sector,

With her seat barely cold at the chairmanship of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Schapiro will become a managing director at a financial consulting and lobbying firm that has hired a slew of former financial regulators over the last several years and that represents for many a nexus of the cozy relations between banks and their regulators.

Are We the People the boss of the corporations, or are the corporations the boss of We the People? Who's to say? Not the SEC, apparently.

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF. Sign up here for the CAF daily summary and/or for the Progress Breakfast.