While jacking up drug prices, Pfizer recently reported more than $27 billion in revenue from its U.S. sales in 2023. But the Big Pharma titan owes nothing in federal income taxes, despite being one of the most profitable pharmaceutical companies in the world. That’s largely thanks to existing loopholes and a 2017 tax law signed by former President Donald Trump.
Matthew Gardner
Matt Gardner is a senior fellow at ITEP where he has worked since 1998. He previously served as ITEP’s executive director from 2006 to 2016. Matt’s work focuses on federal, state and local tax systems, with a particular emphasis on the impact of tax policies on low- and moderate-income taxpayers. He uses ITEP’s microsimulation model to produce economic projections and analyses on the effects of current and proposed federal and state tax and budget policies.
-
media mention April 15, 2024 The Lever: Pfizer’s Massive Tax Dodge
-
blog April 1, 2024 Five Things to Know About Tax Foundation’s Critique of Maryland’s Worldwide Combined Reporting Proposal
Maryland lawmakers are considering enacting worldwide combined reporting (WWCR), also known as complete reporting. This policy offers a more accurate, and less gameable, way to calculate the amount of profit… -
media mention March 4, 2024 HuffPost: America’s Largest Companies Dodged Nearly $300 Billion In Taxes, Report Finds
The country’s largest companies dodged more than $275 billion in federal corporate income taxes from 2018 to 2022, a new report from the nonprofit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy finds. The report examined corporate income taxes paid by 342 of the country’s largest companies from 2018 to 2022, the latest year for which companies have reported their earnings. All of them were profitable in all five years covered by the report.
-
media mention March 4, 2024 The Guardian: Trump Gave Top US Firms Staggering Tax Cuts, With Some Paying $0 or less – Report
Some of the US’s most profitable corporations, including General Motors, Citigroup and Netflix, have slashed their tax bills in the years since the passage of the Trump tax cuts, with nearly a quarter paying rates in the single digits and 23 paying nothing, a report has found. The 2017 law cut the top corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%. But the new assessment of corporate tax avoidance, published on Thursday by the non-profit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (Itep), found that during the first five years the law was in effect, many profitable public companies in the US paid a far lower rate in practice.
-
report February 29, 2024 Corporate Tax Avoidance in the First Five Years of the Trump Tax Law
The Trump tax law overhaul cut the federal corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, but during the first five years it has been in effect, most profitable corporations paid considerably less than that.
-
media mention January 2, 2024 Marketplace: The IRS is Trying a Free Online Tax-Filing System That Cuts Out Vendors
It’s January, which means you’ll be able to file your 2023 tax returns soon. And this year the IRS is trying something new: Some taxpayers in 12 states will be able… -
media mention December 23, 2023 The Lever: Billionaire Gifts To Thomas: Generosity Or Taxable Income?
If billionaires’ largesse was designed to keep the justice on the high court, experts say the money could be considered a taxable payment. Read more. -
media mention December 15, 2023 Reuters: Exxon’s Low US Tax Payments Ruffle Biden’s Climate Agenda
Exxon Mobil’s income tax payments to the U.S. government have dropped to 3% over the past five years – several times below the company’s 20-year average – on massive deductions… -
media mention December 6, 2023 CNBC: Supreme Court Hears Tax Case On ‘Income’
The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments Tuesday on a case that could affect broad swaths of the U.S. tax code and federal revenue. Read more. -
brief November 7, 2023 Far From Radical: State Corporate Income Taxes Already Often Look Beyond the Water’s Edge
State lawmakers are increasingly interested in reforming their corporate tax bases to start from a comprehensive measure of worldwide profit. This provides a more accurate, and less gameable, starting point for calculating profits subject to state corporate tax. Mandating this kind of filing system, known as worldwide combined reporting (WWCR), would be transformative, as it would all but eliminate state corporate tax avoidance done through the artificial shifting of profits into low-tax countries.
-
blog October 25, 2023 On Corporate Tax Avoidance, Critics Take Aim at ITEP – and Miss
In identifying companies that avoid taxes, ITEP presented evidence that our federal corporate income tax was not working the way most Americans think it should work. The public and lawmakers paid attention, including President Biden who then made the case that this demonstrated the need for reform. As a result, Congress enacted the corporate minimum tax, to make the tax system a bit closer to what most Americans want it to be. If you look closely at this, you might just see an example of democracy working.
-
media mention October 2, 2023 Video: ITEP’s Matt Gardner Discusses IRS Funding & ‘U.S. v. Moore’ SCOTUS Case on The Rick Smith Show
ITEP Senior Fellow Matt Gardner joined Rick Smith to discuss, among other things, our new report Supreme Corporate Tax Giveaway: Who Would Benefit from the Roberts Court Striking Down the Mandatory Repatriation Tax?.
-
blog September 27, 2023 Moore Case Could Enrich Tax-Avoiding Multinational Corporations – and the SCOTUS Justices Who Own Their Stock
The Moore v. United States case that will soon be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court could jeopardize at least $270 billion if SCOTUS finds the entire transition tax to be unconstitutional. The decision could also invalidate other important parts of the current tax system while preempting progressive wealth tax proposals. Such an outcome would represent one of the costliest—and most ethically questionable – Supreme Court decisions in U.S. history.
-
report September 27, 2023 Supreme Corporate Tax Giveaway: Who Would Benefit from the Roberts Court Striking Down the Mandatory Repatriation Tax?
The Supreme Court is set to hear what could become one of the most important tax cases in a century. If decided broadly—with a ruling that strikes down the Mandatory Repatriation Tax for corporations, effectively making it unconstitutional to tax unrealized income—the Roberts Court’s decision in Moore v. US could stretch far beyond the plaintiffs themselves and would put in legal jeopardy many laws that prevent corporations and individuals from avoiding taxes and level the economic playing field.
-
media mention August 14, 2023 Washington Post: Biden Wants Rich Companies to Pay Higher Taxes. Some Are Fighting Back.
It was a simple idea: Major U.S. corporations should pay at least a 15 percent tax on their income, ending an era when some of the country’s most profitable firms… -
media mention July 19, 2023 Video: How Google, UPS & Amazon Avoid Paying Billions in Taxes
ITEP Senior Fellow Matt Gardner appeared on The Freedom Side to discuss corporate tax breaks and “bonus depreciation.”
-
media mention July 11, 2023 Video: ITEP’s Matt Gardner Talks Corporate Tax Breaks on Scripps News Live
ITEP Senior Fellow Matt Gardner talks about “bonus depreciation” and our new report that finds that this tax break has saved nearly $67 billion for 25 of the corporations that benefited most.
-
blog July 7, 2023 Minnesota’s Tax Battle of 2023 Signals a Turning of the Tide Against Corporate Tax Avoidance
The qualified success of Minnesota’s GILTI conformity—to say nothing of the state’s serious dalliance with the game-changing worldwide combined reporting–sends a clear signal that the days may be coming to an end when big multinationals can scare state lawmakers into allowing them to game the tax system.
-
report June 29, 2023 Corporations Reap Billions in Tax Breaks Under ‘Bonus Depreciation’
Since TCJA expanded tax breaks for “accelerated depreciation” starting in 2018, it has reduced taxes by nearly $67 billion for the 25 profitable corporations that benefited the most. Congress is now looking at extending this policy.
-
media mention June 7, 2023 Route Fifty: Minnesota Takes On Corporate Profit Shifting
It has closed a loophole that companies use to create income tax havens abroad, and as overall tax revenue continues to slump, it could be a path other states take.… -
media mention May 24, 2023 San Francisco Examiner: $66M Salesforce Program to Close Educational Gaps Has Only Widened Them
Ten years ago, Salesforce pledged millions to San Francisco’s public schools to help close an achievement gap between the district’s Black and brown students, who scored lower than their white… -
blog May 7, 2023 Minnesota Poised to Enact Landmark Loophole-Closing Corporate Tax Reforms
With Minnesota poised to enact worldwide combined reporting of corporate income taxes, business lobbyists are pulling out all the stops to make state lawmakers believe the apocalypse is upon them.
-
report May 4, 2023 Extending Temporary Provisions of the 2017 Trump Tax Law: National and State-by-State Estimates
The push by Congressional Republicans to make the provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent would cost nearly $300 billion in the first year and deliver the bulk of the tax benefits to the wealthiest Americans.
-
media mention March 7, 2023 The Why: Matt Gardner on Corporate Tax Avoidance
-
media mention March 7, 2023 CNBC: State Tax Rates Are Not Central to Migration Patterns
Read more.