Corporate Taxes

blog February 7, 2022
Amazon Avoids More Than $5 Billion in Corporate Income Taxes, Reports 6 Percent Tax Rate on $35 Billion of US Income

Amazon avoided about $5.2 billion of federal income tax on its record $36 billion in U.S. pretax income for fiscal year 2021.
blog February 1, 2022
Netflix Posts a Record $5.3 Billion in Profits and a Federal Tax Rate of Just 1.1 Percent

Netflix’s 2021 financial report shows it doubled its profits to $5.3 billion from the previous year and reported an effective federal corporate income tax rate of 1.1 percent.
blog November 18, 2021
Report Illustrates How 70 Corporations Could Be Affected by Minimum Tax Proposal in the Build Back Better Act

Amazon, Bank of America, Facebook, FedEx, General Motors, Google, Netflix, PayPal, T-Mobile and Verizon are just a few of the 70 corporations that would have paid more taxes under the Democrats’ proposed Corporate Profits Minimum Tax (CPMT) if it had been in effect in 2020 according to a new report from Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s office with estimates verified by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
blog November 4, 2021
Democrats Seek to Eliminate the Stock Buyback Advantage

An important reform in the bill before Congress would tax stock buybacks in a way that is more comparable to how dividends are taxed. Corporations would be required to pay a tax equal to 1 percent of their stock repurchases, ensuring that profits shifted to shareholders in this way are subject to some federal tax.
blog October 27, 2021
Senate Democrats’ Corporate Minimum Tax Could Address the Worst Corporate Tax Dodging

There is no reason corporations reporting hundreds of millions, but not billions, of dollars in profits to their shareholders should be allowed to avoid paying taxes. Nonetheless, the corporate minimum tax is a huge step forward and a valuable component of the Build Back Better plan.
report September 17, 2021
Why Congress Should Reform the Federal Corporate Income Tax

It is reasonable for corporations (and, indirectly, their shareholders) to pay taxes to support the government investments that make their profits possible, such as the highways that facilitate the movement of goods and people, the education and health care systems that provide a productive workforce, the legal system and the protection of property, all of which are vital to commerce. Corporate tax avoidance allows wealthy and powerful individuals to reap enormous benefits from these investments without contributing their fair share to support them.
report July 29, 2021
Corporate Tax Avoidance Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Thirty-nine profitable corporations in the S&P 500 or Fortune 500 paid no federal income tax from 2018 through 2020, the first three years that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was in effect. Besides the 39 companies that paid nothing over three years, an additional 73 profitable corporations paid less than half the statutory corporate income tax rate of 21 percent established under TCJA. As a group, these 73 corporations paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 5.3 percent during these three years.
blog July 16, 2021
Opposition to Biden’s Tax Plan Has Nothing to Do with Small Businesses or Family Farms

Special interests lobbying against President Joe Biden’s tax agenda claim that his proposed corporate income tax rate hike will harm small businesses and that his proposed capital gains tax reforms will hurt family farms. Both claims are absurd attempts by powerful interests to pretend they are defending the little guy.
blog July 16, 2021
Washington Post Confirms that Corporations Are Bolder than Ever in Claiming Dubious Tax Breaks

IRS budget cuts starting in 2010 have forced the agency to reduce its audit rate for corporations with $20 billion or more in assets from 98 percent to 50 percent. The Washington Post found that during the decade, the amount of “uncertain tax benefits” claimed by corporations increased 43 percent, from $164 billion in 2010 to $235 billion in 2020.
blog June 9, 2021
U.S. Should Pursue Biden’s Tax Legislation and International Tax Agreement on Separate Tracks

The agreement announced over the weekend from the finance leaders of the Group of 7 (G7) countries to allow governments to tax some corporate profits based on the location of sales and to implement a 15 percent global minimum tax is a major step forward—but in no way changes the need for Congress to enact President Joe Biden’s tax reforms right now.
blog May 18, 2021
IRS Clock Runs Out, Saving 14 Large Companies $1.3 Billion

Each year, corporations publicly state that some of the tax breaks they claim are unlikely to withstand scrutiny from tax authorities. And each year, corporations report that they will keep some of the dubious tax breaks they declared in previous years simply because the statute of limitations ran out before tax authorities made any conclusions. This suggests that, perhaps because of cuts to its enforcement budget, the IRS is not even investigating corporations that publicly announce they have claimed tax breaks that tax authorities would likely find illegal.
blog April 19, 2021
Nike’s Tax Avoidance Response Does not Dispute It Paid $0 in Federal Income Tax

It was (allegedly) P.T. Barnum who first said “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” But the public relations professionals at the Nike Corporation clearly disagree with this maxim. Last week, after multiple media outlets, including the New York Times, wrote about ITEP’s conclusion that Nike avoided federal corporate income taxes under the Trump tax law, the company contacted these news organizations to… change the subject.
April 8, 2021
The High Cost of Corporate Tax Avoidance (Webinar)

When communities thrive, so do corporations. But when profitable corporations build their empires by exploiting the tax code, it is workers, the environment and our communities—not CEOs or shareholders—that are harmed. Amazon posted its highest U.S. profit ever for 2020, an unprecedented year defined by a pandemic. Yet the company sheltered more than half its profits from corporate taxes—legally. While the company may be one of the most recognizable tax avoiders, it’s not an outlier.
report April 2, 2021
55 Corporations Paid $0 in Federal Taxes on 2020 Profits

At least 55 of the largest corporations in America paid no federal corporate income taxes in their most recent fiscal year despite enjoying substantial pretax profits in the United States. This continues a decades-long trend of corporate tax avoidance by the biggest U.S. corporations, and it appears to be the product of long-standing tax breaks preserved or expanded by the 2017 tax law as well as the CARES Act tax breaks enacted in the spring of 2020.
report April 2, 2021
Corporate Tax Reform in the Wake of the Pandemic

Read as PDF Note: This report is adapted from written testimony submitted by Amy Hanauer before testifying in person to the Senate Budget Committee on March 25, 2021. In 2020,…
blog April 1, 2021
Biden’s Corporate Tax Revolution

The corporate tax plan put forth on Wednesday by President Joe Biden to offset the cost of his infrastructure priorities would be the most significant corporate tax reform in a generation if enacted.
blog March 25, 2021
Here Are Some Truths About Corporate Tax Avoidance

We all need the things that the public sector provides. When corporate taxes go unpaid, the American people have less for the things that would help our communities. That means less repair of our failing infrastructure, less investment in greening our economy, less funding to help young people attend college.
March 25, 2021
Testimony to Senate Budget Committee on Ending a Rigged Tax Code: The Need To Make the Wealthiest People and Largest Corporations Pay their Fair Share of Taxes

Following is testimony of ITEP Executive Director Amy Hanauer before the Senate Budget Committee to consider “Ending a Rigged Tax Code: The Need To Make the Wealthiest People and Largest…
blog March 19, 2021
Zoom Pays $0 in Federal Income Taxes on Pandemic Profits

Zoom Video Communications, the company providing a platform used by remote workers and school children across the country during the pandemic, saw its profits increase by more than 4,000 percent last year but paid no federal corporate income tax on those profits.
blog March 11, 2021
Rep. Doggett and Sen. Whitehouse Introduce Bill to Crack Down on Offshore Corporate Tax-Dodging

The 2017 tax law simply replaced one set of loophole-ridden rules that favored offshore profits over domestic profits with a new set of loophole-ridden rules doing the same thing. A bill introduced today by Rep. Lloyd Doggett and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse would finally fix this to follow a simple principle: we should tax the offshore profits and domestic profits of our corporations the same way.
blog February 12, 2021
CARES Act Helps Create $4.6 Billion Tax Cut for Health Care Companies Paying Opioid Settlements

Talk about a one-two punch. A new report from the Washington Post reveals that the U.S. public is set to pay for the opioid crisis again. Already, communities across the country have paid a heavy price via the devastating public health toll. Now, it appears taxpayers will be on the hook for billions in corporate tax breaks as four pharmaceutical companies exploit a loophole in the Trump-GOP tax law and a CARES Act tax provision meant for companies facing pandemic-related profit losses.
blog February 3, 2021
Amazon Has Record-Breaking Profits in 2020, Avoids $2.3 Billion in Federal Income Taxes

Amazon’s winning streak in its battle against the U.S. tax system remains intact. This week the retail giant announced record-breaking sales and income for 2020, and an effective federal income tax rate of just 9.4 percent, less than half the statutory corporate tax of 21 percent. If Amazon had paid 21 percent of its profits in federal income tax, that would have come to $4.1 billion. The company’s reported current tax of $1.8 billion was less than half that, meaning last year Amazon avoided $2.3 billion in taxes.
blog February 1, 2021
Pandemic Profits: Netflix Made Record Profits in 2020, Paid a Tax Rate of Less than 1 Percent

Netflix’s “current” federal income tax for 2020 was $24 million, which equals just 0.9 percent of the company’s pretax income for the year. This is another way of saying Netflix paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 0.9 percent in 2020. If the company paid the statutory rate, its tax bill would be $572 million.
blog August 5, 2020
Between the Lines: Amazon Q2 Report Hints It Will Avoid Taxes on This Year’s Record Profit Haul

The House Judiciary Committee last week held an antitrust hearing to scrutinize Amazon and other tech companies’ growing dominance. A look at the online retail giant’s new quarterly report and past tax avoidance reveals why lawmakers should be equally concerned about how the tax system allows dominant, profitable corporations to avoid most or all federal tax on their profits.

Amazon, yet again, is poised to pay little or no federal income tax on its record profits, and it appears likely to do so using entirely legal tax breaks for stock options and research and development.
blog July 29, 2020
Biden’s Minimum Corporate Tax Proposal: Yes, Please Limit Amazon’s Tax Breaks

A large majority of Americans want corporations to pay more taxes and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has several proposals to achieve that. The newest idea is to require corporations to pay a minimum tax equal to 15 percent of profits they report to shareholders and to the public if this is less than what they pay under regular corporate tax rules. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal quotes several critics of the proposal, but none of their points are convincing.