March 22, 2017

Altoona Mirror: Tax season shows why reforms needed

media mention

A new study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy demonstrates that any reform must be in multiple directions, rather than in just reducing rates at the top.

President Donald Trump and others often lament that the top corporate tax rate is too high at 35 percent.

But the study found that massive tax breaks devised specifically for special interests reduce the effective rate, an average of what corporations actually pay, to about 21 percent.

Researchers examined 258 Fortune 500 companies with $3.8 trillion in profits from 2008 through 2015.

It found that 100 of them paid no taxes in at least one of those years and that 18 of them — including General Electric, International Paper, Priceline.com and PG&E — had net tax liability of less than zero for the entire period.

That means that they received rebates. Read more



Share