We've had these subsidies in place for 8 years
So who is subsidized..? Look at the tax returns and not the statements issued by congress.
"Over the last three years, Exxon Mobil has paid an average of $27 billion annually in taxes. That's $27,000,000,000 per year, a number so large it's hard to comprehend. Here's one way to put Exxon's taxes into perspective.
According to IRS data for 2004, the most recent year available:
Total number of tax returns: 130 million
Number of Tax Returns for the Bottom 50%: 65 million
Adjusted Gross Income for the Bottom 50%: $922 billion
Total Income Tax Paid by the Bottom 50%: $27.4 billion
Conclusion: In other words, just one corporation (Exxon Mobil) pays as much in taxes ($27 billion) annually as the entire bottom 50% of individual taxpayers, which is 65,000,000 people! Further, the tax rate for the bottom 50% is only 3% of adjusted gross income ($27.4 billion / $922 billion), and the tax rate for Exxon was 41% in 2006 ($67.4 billion in taxable income, $27.9 billion in taxes).
Exxon paid 41% of their income to taxes in 2006 (27 billion dollars..) and Cisco and Microsoft didn't pay any federal income taxes for the fiscal year 2000 (which was a very profitable year for both..)
sfgate.com
(10-10) 04:00 PST SAN JOSE -- Cisco Systems, the second-most valuable company in America, paid no federal income taxes for its latest fiscal year thanks to a little-known corporate tax break on employee stock options.
More Business
Microsoft, which ranks No. 4 in market value, did not pay any federal taxes either, it seems.
Like many high-tech firms, Cisco and Microsoft are allowed to take a tax deduction for money their employees earn when they ``exercise'' options and buy stock in the company at a preset price.
These options have become an increasingly popular way for businesses to reward employees, but they also have huge benefits to the companies themselves.
The tax break was established decades ago, when companies doled out stock options to only a handful of top executives and the tax benefit they generated was minimal.
But now that many companies -- including Cisco, Microsoft and most other new-economy firms -- give options to everyone, the tax break is becoming enormous.
In Cisco's case, this benefit wiped out $1.8 billion in federal taxes, and probably more than twice that for Microsoft. |
