Americans for Tax Fairness: Engine of Inequality: A Flood of Corporate Profits Is Enriching Wealthy Shareholders Through Stock Buybacks and Dividends, At The Expense of Workers and The Public

All but a handful of 280 large, profitable corporations spent more money making their wealthy shareholders richer through dividends and stock buybacks than they paid in federal income taxes in the five years after the enactment of the Trump-GOP tax law, according to a new analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness. And it wasn’t even close: altogether the stockholder payouts outstripped tax payments by 7-to-1, $4.4 trillion vs. $608 billion. This heavy bias towards shareholder payments for wealthy investors over tax payments for public services exacerbates economic inequality and promotes political instability, as increasingly frustrated American workers struggle to get by while wealthy stock investors surge ever further ahead.

Read more.