Slate: Our Corporate Tax System Is a Mess. Republicans Might Just Make It Worse

Earlier this year, the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released a report in which it analyzed the tax rates paid by members of the Fortune 500 between 2008 and 2015. The authors selected the 258 corporations that were profitable in all eight years to avoid dragging down the average with companies that paid no taxes because they lost money. They found 100 different companies that, despite being consistently profitable, paid zero federal taxes in at least one year, and 18 that paid no taxes in any of the years surveyed. Meanwhile, there were vast differences in average rates between industry. Utility companies paid an average rate of just 3.1 percent; tech companies paid about 20 percent; retailers and wholesalers paid more than 30 percent, as did health care providers.

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“I think it’s fair to say that the Trump plan as we understand it would actually increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots,” ITEP’s Matthew Gardner told me. “It would accentuate the preferential treatment that certain sectors of the business world and certain high-income Americans get.” Read more

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