Which corporations pay tax, which don’t
November 4, 2011
by Ronald O Carlson
Who gets big bailouts and even bigger subsidies? America’s biggest corporations, that’s who. Surprisingly or not, a list of the biggest scumbags includes Google, Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo, Wells Fargo and — you just keep laughing, Jeff — Amazon. Of course, it’s all perfectly “legal,” but galling nonetheless.
When you hear Republicans or one of their fellow travelers complaining about corporate tax rates, which they repeat ad nauseum are 35 percent, do you believe them? Well, you shouldn’t.
Citizens for Tax Justice has put together a report — Corporate Taxpayers & Corporate Tax Dodgers 2008-10 — that details which of the 280 most profitable US corporations surveyed do and don’t pay taxes. Naturally, the list includes banks and some of the world’s biggest tech companies.
“These 280 corporations received a total of nearly $223 billion in tax subsidies,” said Robert McIntyre, director at Citizens for Tax Justice and the report’s lead author. “This is wasted money that could have gone to protect Medicare, create jobs and cut the deficit.”
‘There’s class warfare, but it’s my class that’s winning’ — Warren Buffet
• Average effective tax rate for all 280 companies in the study over the three year period was 18.5 percent; for 2009-2010 it was 17.3 percent
• 78 of the companies enjoyed at least one year in which their federal income tax was zero or less (i.e. got a subsidy)
• 30 companies enjoyed a negative income tax rate over the entire three year period on their combined pre-tax profits of $160 billion
• Total tax subsidies given to the 280 profitable corporations amounted to $222.7 billion from 2008-2010
• Wells Fargo tops the list of 280 US corporations receiving the most subsidies, getting nearly $18 billion in tax breaks from the US Treasury since ’08
• Some companies within sectors fare worse than others — FedEx paid 0.9 percent since ’08 while UPS paid 24.1 percent
• Retailers and wholesalers averaged tax rates of 30 percent, while Amazon paid only 7.9 percent on its $1.8 billion in profits since ’08
• Financial services received the largest share (16.8 percent) of all federal tax subsidies since ’08. More than half of federal corporate tax subsidies for companies in the study went to four industries: financial services, utilities, telecommunications, and oil, gas & pipelines
• Top 10 defense contractors saw their combined tax rate decline from 19.3 percent in ’08 to 10.6 percent in ’10
• US corporations with significant (10 percent or more of their total worldwide profits) foreign profits paid tax rates to foreign countries that were almost a third higher than they paid to the IRS on their domestic profits
Do you know who does pay tax, an average of 31 percent a year? Intel and Apple, among others, do.
Which of the above scumbags pisses you off the most?
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