Blog - Corporate Taxes
142 posts
Business Roundtable’s Newfound Devotion to Corporate Responsibility Doesn’t Include Paying Taxes
August 20, 2019 • By Matthew Gardner
If you squint really hard, the Business Roundtable’s newly declared fondness for “supporting the communities in which we work” could be read as an acknowledgment of the need for a tax system that can pay for needed services. But it’s not.
If a future Congress and president enact a real tax reform, one that requires corporations to pay their fair share and ends TCJA’s various corporate breaks for offshore profits, then companies will use inversions and other tactics to dodge taxes once again—if lawmakers let them. That’s why any real tax reform will include something like the Stop Corporate Inversions Act, introduced last week by Sens. Dick Durbin and Jack Reed to block inversions.
$4.3 Billion in Rebates, Zero-Tax Bill for 60 Profitable Corps Directly Related to Loopholes
April 12, 2019 • By Matthew Gardner
Meet the new corporate tax system, same as the old corporate tax system. That’s the inescapable conclusion of a new ITEP report assessing the taxpaying behavior of America’s most profitable corporations. The report, Corporate Tax Avoidance Remains Rampant Under New Law, released earlier this week, finds that 60 Fortune 500 corporations disclose paying zero in federal income taxes in 2018 despite enjoying large profits.
Data released Friday by the U.S. Treasury Department should give great pause to all who care about the federal government’s ability to raise revenue in a fair, sustainable way. In the wake of the 2017 corporate tax overhaul, corporate tax collections have fallen at a rate never seen during a period of economic growth.
Rep. Doggett and Sen. Whitehouse Reintroduce Bill to End Offshore Tax Avoidance
March 15, 2019 • By Lorena Roque
On Thursday, Representative Lloyd Doggett and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse announced that they are reintroducing the “No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act.” Our international corporate tax rules have been a mess for a long time, and Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) failed to resolve the problems. The old rules and the new rules under TCJA both tax offshore corporate profits more lightly than domestic corporate profits, but in different ways. The No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act would create rules that tax domestic profits and foreign profits in the same way.
Fear, Not Facts: Netflix Misleads Media Reporting on Corporate Tax Avoidance
February 13, 2019 • By Matthew Gardner
In an age when even the most incontrovertible facts are routinely dismissed as “fake news,” reporting on corporate taxes can be a daunting challenge for members of the media. ITEP’s recent analysis of the income tax disclosures made by Netflix in its annual financial report last week provide an excellent reminder of this.
Amazon in Its Prime: Doubles Profits, Pays $0 in Federal Income Taxes
February 13, 2019 • By Matthew Gardner
Amazon, the ubiquitous purveyor of two-day delivery of just about everything, nearly doubled its profits to $11.2 billion in 2018 from $5.6 billion the previous year and, once again, didn’t pay a single cent of federal income taxes.
New Legislation Aims to Change Tax Law Provisions That Incentivize Outsourcing
November 29, 2018 • By Richard Phillips
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and several Senate co-sponsors this week introduced the Removing Incentives for Outsourcing Act, which curbs harmful new incentives created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) that encourage companies like GM to move their profits and operations offshore.
GM Announcement Confirms Tax Cuts Don’t Prevent, May Encourage Layoffs
November 27, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner
GM’s most recent quarterly financial report reveals the company has saved more than $150 million so far this year due to last year’s corporate tax cuts. So the layoffs announcement may seem especially jarring to anyone who believed President Trump’s claim that his tax cuts would spur job creation—including the Ohio residents Trump told directly “don’t sell your homes” because lost auto-making jobs “are all coming back.”
New ITEP Report on Depreciation Breaks: The Most Important Tax Giveaway that People Don’t Know About
November 19, 2018 • By Steve Wamhoff
Many Americans sense that the tax code is riddled with unnecessary and costly breaks for big business, but if asked to name one, few would reply “accelerated depreciation.” While they may seem arcane, tax breaks like “full expensing” and other types of accelerated depreciation are among the central problems in our tax code. A new report from ITEP makes the case that any serious tax reform would repeal or sharply curb these provisions.
Today Amazon announced major expansions in New York and Virginia, where it intends to hire up to 50,000 full-time employees. The announcement marks the culmination of a highly publicized search that lasted more than a year and involved aggressive courting of the company by cities across the nation. The following are three tax-related observations on the announcement.
15 Companies Report an Average 10.4 Percentage Point Drop in Effective Tax Rates Since 2017
November 13, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
Comparing the year’s first three quarterly filings of 2018 with those of 2017, we find that 15 of the largest Fortune 500 companies reported worldwide effective income tax rates declining by an average of 10.4 percentage points and by as much as 16 percentage points. In total these companies owed $22.3 billion less in taxes than they would have under their 2017 effective rates, saving an average of $1.5 billion each.
New Report Finds Tax Transparency Is Not Just Ethical: It Has a Real Fiscal Impact
November 5, 2018 • By Monica Miller
A new report by Hubertus Wolff and Michael Overesch finds that public country-by-country reporting (CBCR) can have a significant fiscal impact. In fact, the report shows that new CBCR rules applied to European banks appear to have substantially increased the tax rates paid by banks that engage in tax-haven activities. This means that CBCR may not just improve the integrity of the tax system and provide critical information so investors can gauge investment risks, but may also have a much more immediate impact on curbing tax avoidance.
Post-TCJA, International Corporate Tax System Still Leaking Hundreds of Billions in Profits
November 5, 2018 • By Richard Phillips
A recently released working paper from Kimberley Clausing of Reed College finds that U.S. corporations will avoid taxes on nearly $300 billion in offshore profits every year for the foreseeable future. The paper provides an informative new look into the level of offshore tax avoidance before and after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). While advocates of the TCJA claimed the tax law would end tax haven abuse through lowering the statutory rate and other measures, Clausing’s analysis shows that the TCJA will still allow the vast majority of offshore tax avoidance to remain intact.
Lawmakers Want Working People to Foot the Bill for Top-Heavy Tax Cuts
October 18, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
Earlier this week, the Treasury Department reported that the federal deficit this fiscal year climbed by 17 percent to $779 billion, and next year is expected to be at least $1 trillion. The increased deficit comes after Congress last December passed an unpopular tax cut (The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act) that will cost nearly $2 trillion over a decade. GOP leaders repeatedly claimed the measure would pay for itself and not increase annual deficits, in spite of multiple economic predictions to the contrary.
‘Financial Exposure’ Showcases Tax Misconduct by Powerful Individuals and Corporations
October 10, 2018 • By Peter Della-Rocca
Elise J. Bean’s Financial Exposure reiterates the point that tax avoidance and tax evasion were endemic to our financial system long before allegations against a sitting president brought them to the forefront of the public consciousness.
Oxfam Report Finds Pharmaceuticals Profiteering Off Crises in Developing Countries
September 20, 2018 • By Peter Della-Rocca
The report indicates, pharmaceutical companies have taken steps to hide their profits in low-tax countries, sapping billions in revenue from the governments that invest in the science that drives their products and safeguard the patents that undergird their business. Pharmaceutical companies made use of a familiar battery of methods to exploit the international system this way, including inversions to disguise an American company as a foreign one and passing profits into low-tax jurisdictions through artificial usage fees on intangible assets like intellectual property.
New Study Confirms Offshore Earnings are Flowing into Stock Buybacks, Not Jobs and Investments
September 7, 2018 • By Richard Phillips
A new study by the Federal Reserve found that the evidence so far suggests that the new repatriation tax break has resulted in a surge in stock buybacks and little discernable impact in investment by its biggest beneficiaries, just as critics predicted.
How should lawmakers fix the system? A new ITEP report breaks down how the international corporate tax code under the TCJA works, and how lawmakers can fix it. The report lays out three key principles for reform: equalize the rates, eliminate inversions, and create transparency.
New Legislation Would Close Significant Offshore Loopholes in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
June 6, 2018 • By Richard Phillips
One simple rule should drive the nation’s international tax policies: tax the offshore profits of American companies the same way their domestic profits are taxed. The latest legislation to approach that ideal is the Per-Country Minimum Act (H.R. 6015), from Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR). The DeFazio bill closes the loophole that allows corporations to use foreign tax credits to shelter profits in tax havens from U.S. taxes. No other bill addresses this.
Facebook Facing Shareholder Scrutiny for Its Offshore Tax Avoidance
May 30, 2018 • By Richard Phillips
In advance of its annual shareholders meeting on May 31, Facebook was confronted with a shareholder resolution asking it to endorse a set of principles to guide its tax policy and to ensure that such principles consider the impact of its tax strategies on local economies and public services. The resolution is a signal from a group of concerned shareholders that Facebook’s tax avoidance hurts its reputation, the communities in which it operates, and creates financial risks to the company’s shareholders.
Apple’s Three-Month Tax Savings under President Trump’s New Tax Law: $1.68 Billion
May 2, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner
By now, it should come as no shock that profitable Fortune 500 corporations are reaping huge benefits from the corporate tax cuts enacted last December. But as first quarter earnings reports are released, we’re learning just how big.
15 Companies Report Tax Savings of $6.2 Billion in First Three Months of 2018
April 26, 2018 • By Matthew Gardner
In reports released over the past week, covering the first three months of 2018, a few of the biggest and most profitable Fortune 500 corporations acknowledge receiving billions in tax cuts in the first quarter of 2018 alone. Fifteen of these companies collectively disclosed reducing their effective tax rates by $6.2 billion compared to the rates they faced in the first quarter of last year.
Key Takeaways from John Oliver’s Segment on Corporate Tax Avoidance
April 16, 2018 • By Richard Phillips
The HBO television show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver has become known for its longer segments that examine important issues facing the country. In its latest segment on Sunday, the show took a deep dive into corporate taxes and how many companies manage to avoid paying their fair share. Between its hilarious interludes, the segment painted a striking portrait of problems in our corporate tax code and how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) failed to address them.
The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to consider a case next week (South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc.) that has the potential to significantly improve states and localities’ ability to enforce their sales tax laws on Internet purchases.
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