Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)

Corporate Tax Watch

New Income Tax Disclosure Rules Mean Halliburton Can No Longer Conceal Its Offshore Tax Avoidance

The company’s latest annual report throws the doors wide open once again on Halliburton’s penchant for offshoring its profits to tax havens, thanks to terrific new disclosure rules introduced by an obscure but vital agency, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).

Cheniere Energy Gets $380 Million Gift from Trump’s Treasury Department

Cheniere Energy's latest annual financial report shows the company reaped a cool $380 million in tax cuts from a single regulatory change made by the Trump administration last fall.

Nvidia’s Tax Bill Shows It’s Not Just Zero-Tax Corporations That Hurt Our Budget Deficit the Most

Semiconductor giant Nvidia reported avoiding $6.8 billion in federal income taxes last year. The company did this in a year when it reported greater earnings growth than almost any corporation in history, with U.S. pretax income coming in at an astonishing $123 billion.

Yum! Brands’ Recipe for Tax Avoidance: Trump Tax Cuts with a Dash of Malta

the fast-food multinational that owns KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut reported this week that it made $1 billion of pretax profits in the U.S. last year—and didn’t pay a dime of federal income taxes on those profits.

Live Nation Entertainment Says Trump Tax Law Drove its 2025 Federal Income Tax Bill to Zero

The company paid zero federal income tax in 2025 despite reporting $145 million of U.S. profits.

Palantir Pays Zero Federal Income Tax Despite Explosive Growth, Largely Due to Trump Tax Law

Palantir reported $1.5 billion of U.S. income but paid exactly zero federal income tax in 2025. Despite explosive growth, tax breaks from the Trump tax law helped Palantir avoid paying even a dime of federal income tax on its earnings.

Four Big Tech Companies Avoid $51 Billion in Taxes in Wake of One Big Beautiful Bill Act

Four of the corporations whose CEOs flanked President Trump at his 2025 inauguration ceremony have now disclosed that they collectively received $51 billion in federal tax breaks in 2025, much of that likely from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).

Meta’s Federal Tax Rate Hits an All-Time Low Due to Breaks Expanded by Trump Tax Law

The company paid an effective federal income tax rate of just over 3.5% in 2025, the lowest it has recorded since the company went public as Facebook in 2012.

Tesla Reported Zero Federal Income Tax on $5.7 Billion of U.S. Income in 2025

Tesla enjoyed almost $5.7 billion of U.S. income in 2025 but paid $0 in federal income tax. Over the past three years, the Elon Musk-led company reported $12.5 billion of U.S. income on which its current federal tax was just $48 million.

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2025: The Year in Tax Policy

December 23, 2025 • By ITEP Staff

2025: The Year in Tax Policy

From Congressional discussions over the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" to debates on property taxes, ITEP kept busy this year analyzing tax proposals and showing Americans across the country how tax decisions affect them.

10 Reasons Why the U.S. Should Reform Its Corporate Income Tax

The U.S. needs a tax code that is more progressive and that raises more revenue than the one we have now. An important way to achieve this is to reform the taxation of business profits. These four key policy reforms would greatly strengthen the corporate tax system: Eliminating or restricting special breaks and loopholes that […]

President Trump Says His Tariffs Aren’t Paid by Americans. Corporations Are Indicating the Opposite.

Corporations have publicly revealed that they are passing the cost of tariffs on to Americans—the opposite of what the executive branch has said is happening.

Tax Haven Data Demonstrate Need for Global Minimum Tax Despite Opposition from Trump Administration

American corporations use accounting gimmicks to make profits appear to be earned in tax havens. This widespread problem could be fixed by Congress enacting legislation to implement a minimum tax on corporations that meets the standards of the global minimum tax that other countries have begun to implement.

Biden Tax Reforms Take a $16 Billion Bite Out of Trump’s Big Tax Giveaway to Meta

Meta’s earnings setback is entirely attributable to an important tax reform championed by the Biden administration in 2022.

Oil and Gas Companies Are Paying Less Tax to the U.S. than to Foreign Governments

Since 2017, these companies paid $135 billion in income taxes to foreign governments, but just $29 billion to the U.S.

Excessive CEO Pay Makes Inequality Worse. Shareholders and the Public Deserve to Know About Compensation Disparities

Huge executive pay packages are a prime driver of income inequality. Shareholders and the public deserve to know about how CEOs are compensated, but new SEC leadership seems to think otherwise.

Americans Want to Know Which Corporations Aren’t Paying Taxes, but House Republicans Want to Keep this Information Secret

The appropriations plan released by House Republicans this weekend threatens to withhold funding for an obscure but vital financial oversight board because that board now requires corporations to disclose basic information about their income tax payments (or lack thereof).

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Analysis of Tax Provisions in the Senate Reconciliation Bill: National and State Level Estimates

June 25, 2025 • By Carl Davis, Jessica Vela, Joe Hughes, Steve Wamhoff

Analysis of Tax Provisions in the Senate Reconciliation Bill: National and State Level Estimates

Compared to its House counterpart, the Senate bill makes certain tax provisions more generous, including corporate tax breaks that it makes permanent rather than temporary. But the bottom line for both is the same. Both bills give more tax cuts to the richest 1 percent than to the entire bottom 60 percent of Americans, and both bills particularly favor high-income people living in more conservative states.

House Bill’s $164 Billion Giveaway to Multinational Corporations Puts America Last

The House of Representatives’ recently passed tax bill changes course on taxing multinational corporations engaged in shifting U.S. profits overseas, offering massive tax giveaways that weaken American revenues and risk sending more American corporate investment offshore.

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Analysis of Tax Provisions in the House Reconciliation Bill: National and State Level Estimates

May 22, 2025 • By Carl Davis, Jessica Vela, Joe Hughes, Steve Wamhoff

Analysis of Tax Provisions in the House Reconciliation Bill: National and State Level Estimates

The poorest fifth of Americans would receive 1 percent of the House reconciliation bill's net tax cuts in 2026 while the richest fifth of Americans would receive two-thirds of the tax cuts. The richest 5 percent alone would receive a little less than half of the net tax cuts that year.

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What Corporations Have to Gain from the Gutting of the IRS

May 7, 2025 • By Matthew Gardner, Spandan Marasini, Steve Wamhoff

What Corporations Have to Gain from the Gutting of the IRS

Seven huge corporations recently announced that in 2024 they were allowed to collectively keep $1.4 billion in tax breaks from previous years that they had publicly admitted would likely be found illegal if investigated – all because the tax authorities were unable to identify and disallow them before the statute of limitations ran out.

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Trump 2025 Tax Law: Research and Resources

May 2, 2025 • By ITEP Staff

Trump 2025 Tax Law: Research and Resources

Want to know more about the tax and spending megabill that President Trump recently signed into law? We've got you covered.

It’s Tax Day. You’ve Paid Your Share, but the Billionaires Haven’t.

You likely had most of your federal taxes deducted from your paychecks throughout the year. This is not true, however, for mega-millionaires and billionaires, some of whom are practically running our government right now.

What the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board Got Wrong About Tesla’s Tax Avoidance

Tesla’s income tax avoidance is still in the news, and that’s a good thing.

Why Americans Are Right to Be Unhappy About Corporate Tax Avoidance

If lawmakers wanted to reduce income inequality and racial inequality, shutting down or at least limiting corporate tax breaks would be one option to achieve that goal. Unfortunately, President Trump and the current Congress show little interest in this and may even move in the opposite direction by introducing new corporate tax breaks.