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.
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media mention April 15, 2024 The Lever: Pfizer’s Massive Tax Dodge
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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.
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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.
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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. -
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?.
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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.”
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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.
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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… -
media mention March 7, 2023 The Why: Matt Gardner on Corporate Tax Avoidance
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media mention March 7, 2023 CNBC: State Tax Rates Are Not Central to Migration Patterns
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media mention January 26, 2023 The American Prospect: Reanimating the Taxman
At its core, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the federal government’s revenue collector and benefits administrator. Yet with Congress inclined to run virtually every function of the government through… -
media mention November 23, 2022 The Lever: Will Biden End An Illegal $50 Billion Tax Giveaway?
The IRS is sanctioning state laws allowing rich Americans to bypass the SALT cap and avoid billions in taxes, but a new Biden nominee could end the scheme. Read more. -
media mention April 15, 2022 MarketPlace: Millions of college students are eligible for tax credits. But they have to file for them
“They’re sensibly designed to make college more attainable, to make it so that students don’t have to live in poverty just to pay for their college expenses,” said Matthew Gardner,… -
media mention April 14, 2022 CNBC: How companies like Amazon, Nike and FedEx avoid paying federal taxes
The current United States tax code allows some of the biggest company names in the country to not pay any federal corporate income tax. In fact, at least 55 of… -
media mention April 12, 2022 CSPAN Washington Journal: Biden Tax Proposals
ITEP Senior Fellow Matthew Gardner appeared on CSpan’s Washington Journal on Tuesday, April 12, 2022, to discuss President Biden’s tax proposals. -
media mention March 14, 2022 Washington Post: Congress urges DOJ, Treasury to examine drug companies aiming to turn opioid settlements into tax breaks
There is uncertainty in the law about these types of tax breaks, said Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Though recent changes… -
media mention March 2, 2022 CNN: Fact-checking Biden’s 2022 State of the Union address
Facts First: This needs context. Biden left out a significant word from the prepared text of his speech. The prepared text, which the White House emailed to journalists just before… -
media mention February 25, 2022 The Guardian: ‘A really bad deal’: Michigan awards GM $1bn in incentives for new electric cars
Meanwhile, GM has recorded $70bn in profits since 2010 while taking $8bn in subsidies in recent decades – more than all but one company nationwide. The idea that it needed incentives to… -
media mention September 24, 2021 Wall Street Journal: Zero-tax companies could remain
Mr. Biden’s often-cited list of 55 companies comes from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, or ITEP, a progressive group that publishes a regular report on the zero-tax-company phenomenon.… -
media mention July 29, 2021 Common Dreams: 73 Major Corporations Paid Just 5.3% Federal Tax Rate Between 2018 and 2020: Report
Thirty-nine U.S. corporations reaping over $120 billion in profits between 2018 and 2020—the first three years of the so-called “GOP tax scam”—paid no net federal income tax, or claimed refunds…