Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)

Corporate Tax Avoidance

336 companies avoided $168,423,600,000 in federal income tax on $1.2 trillion of profit in 2025

336 companies avoided $168,423,600,000 in federal income tax on $1.2 trillion of profit in 2025

336 companies avoided

$168,423,600,000

in federal income tax on $1.2 trillion
of profit in 2025

With earnings season now underway, dozens of huge corporations have disclosed paying single-digit federal income tax rates thanks to tax cuts included in President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Tesla collectively avoided $51 billion in federal income tax for 2025. Tesla and Palantir reported paying zero federal income tax at all.

President Trump’s 2017 tax law and the recently passed OBBBA have led to substantial tax avoidance from the nation’s largest corporations. Corporate profits continue to soar while corporate tax avoidance reaches extreme levels. That’s why reforming the corporate income tax and closing loopholes is so critical to a fair tax code.

Top Federal Tax Avoiders

Microsoft

Reported federal tax rate: 2.44%

Federal Tax breaks include

  • R&D Expensing$1.6 billion
  • Depreciation Deduction$12 billion
  • R&D Credit$1.5 billion

Alphabet

Reported federal tax rate: 8.01%

Federal Tax breaks include

  • Depreciation Deduction$3.3 billion
  • FDII Deduction$3.9 billion
  • R&D Credit$2.1 billion
  • Stock Options$2.6 billion

Amazon.com

Reported federal tax rate: 1.37%

Federal Tax breaks include

  • R&D Expensing$4 billion
  • Depreciation Deduction$6.5 billion
  • R&D Credit$2.4 billion
  • Stock Options$2.6 billion

Meta

Reported federal tax rate: 3.57%

Federal Tax breaks include

  • R&D Expensing$12.6 billion
  • Depreciation Deduction$4.9 billion
  • R&D Credit$3.9 billion
  • Stock Options$4.3 billion

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Reported federal tax rate: 5.68%

Federal Tax breaks include

  • Depreciation Deduction$2.7 billion
  • Tax Credits$2.1 billion

Recent Filings

Tyler Technologies

Reported federal tax rate: 2.63%

Federal Tax breaks include

  • R&D Expensing$61.8 million
  • Stock Options$15.1 million

Twilio

Reported federal tax rate: 0.23%

Federal Tax breaks include

  • R&D Expensing$68.8 million
  • R&D Credit$40.9 million

ResMed

Reported federal tax rate: 7%

Federal Tax breaks include

  • R&D Expensing$34.1 million
  • R&D Credit$9.7 million

ITT

Reported federal tax rate: 10.81%

Federal Tax breaks include

  • R&D Expensing$11.4 million
  • FDII Deduction$8.7 million

Booz Allen Hamilton Holding

Reported federal tax rate: -11.78%

Federal Tax breaks include

  • R&D Expensing$237 million
  • Depreciation Deduction$8 million
  • FDII Deduction$29 million
  • R&D Credit$103 million

Cintas

Reported federal tax rate: 14.79%

Federal Tax breaks include

  • Depreciation Deduction$34.5 million
  • Stock Options$53 million

Companies are included here only if review of their 10-K filing for the 2025 fiscal year indicates that they avoided paying some amount of federal income taxes. Companies are counted as avoiding federal income tax if they are based in the US, reported a domestic pretax profit, and their federal ETR is less than the statutory 21%. Total tax avoided is the sum of the difference between the amount each company paid in federal income tax and 21% of their pretax profits. Individual tax reduction items are listed only for companies with a federal ETR below 15%.

Publications on Corporate Tax Avoidance (View All)

Blog

Six Companies Reaped $83 Billion in Federal Tax Breaks in 2025

August 14, 2026 • Sarah Buttikofer, Matthew Gardner

Six companies alone accounted for $83 billion of federal tax breaks disclosed by publicly traded U.S companies so far for 2025. Microsoft received a record high for single-year federal tax breaks for one publicly traded company, followed by Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, JPMorgan Chase, and Nvidia.

Blog

Microsoft Reports a 2.44 Percent Federal Tax Rate on a Record $101 Billion in Profits

July 29, 2026 • Matthew Gardner

Microsoft avoided federal income tax on almost all of its U.S. income for fiscal year 2026. The company’s 2.44 percent federal tax rate on over $100 billion of U.S. income is largely attributable to tax breaks that were either created or expanded by Republican tax cuts enacted at the behest of President Donald Trump in 2017 and 2025.

Blog

Flying Under the Tax Radar: How Profitable Airlines Avoided Federal Income Taxes in 2025

July 27, 2026 • Sarah Buttikofer, Spandan Marasini

Corporate tax disclosures reveal that five profitable airlines paid almost nothing in federal income tax last year. In 2025, the effective federal income tax rates of these airlines ranged from 1.07 percent to below zero.  

Blog

New Legislation Would Require Big Multinationals to Tell Shareholders Where They’re Hiding Offshore Profits

July 16, 2026 • Matthew Gardner

Sen. Chris Van Hollen introduced legislation requiring big multinational corporations to tell shareholders and the public what they’re already telling tax authorities behind closed doors: how much income they’re booking in specific offshore tax havens and how little tax they’re paying to these jurisdictions.

Blog

Trump Administration Says Shining Light on Corporate Tax Avoidance is ‘Very Dangerous’

July 14, 2026 • Matthew Gardner

Administration officials appear far more concerned about the public knowing too much about how U.S. corporations shift their income into offshore tax havens.

Blog

New EU Disclosure Requirements Are Helping Identify Corporate Tax Avoiders

June 30, 2026 • Matthew Gardner

Microsoft reports a huge share of its worldwide profit in low-tax Ireland and is achieving this despite having a very small share of its employees there. As other companies make similar disclosures between now and the end of calendar year 2026, investors and the public will likely get a much clearer sense of how much profit corporations are hiding offshore—and how much tax they’re avoiding by doing so.