Nearly two dozen of America’s largest corporations together received roughly $50 billion in tax breaks from 2018 through 2021 under a Trump tax law provision that many lawmakers now want to extend. Corporate lobbyists are even asking Congress to extend this “accelerated depreciation” tax break as part of a possible year-end tax bill.
Corporate Tax Watch
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brief November 10, 2022 Twenty-Three Corporations Saved $50 Billion So Far Under Trump Tax Law’s “Bonus Depreciation” that Many Lawmakers Want to Extend
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report October 4, 2022 Unfinished Tax Reform: Corporate Minimum Taxes
While the Inflation Reduction Act’s corporate minimum tax is a huge improvement in our tax system, implementing the global corporate minimum tax would improve it much more. And if other governments implement the global minimum tax, the United States will have an even stronger interest in joining them to ensure that new revenue collected from American corporations flows to the U.S. rather than to other countries.
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news release August 12, 2022 ITEP: Inflation Reduction Act is Biggest Corporate Tax Reform in Decades
Amy Hanauer, Executive Director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, issued the following statement on “The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022,” the reconciliation bill passed today by… -
blog August 9, 2022 What Tax Provisions are in the Senate-Passed Inflation Reduction Act?
The Inflation Reduction Act approved by the Senate on Aug. 7 would raise more than $700 billion in new revenue over a decade by closing corporate tax loopholes, empowering the… -
blog August 5, 2022 Corporations are Shifting Profits to Wealthy Investors Tax-Free—Stock Buyback Tax Would Change That
Senate Democrats have announced an agreement on the Inflation Reduction Act that, among other changes to a previous version of the bill, would apply a 1 percent tax on corporations repurchasing their own stock. This proposal was included in the House-passed Build Back Better Act last year and was estimated at that time to raise $124 billion over 10 years. This measure would ensure that income transferred from corporations to wealthy shareholders does not continue to escape taxation.
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blog August 5, 2022 Corporate Minimum Tax Examples: Apple Would Likely Pay More, 3M Would Not
Apple, one of the largest corporations in the United States despite manufacturing most of its physical products offshore, would likely pay the corporate minimum tax that is included in the Inflation Reduction Act that the Senate is debating this week. 3M, a manufacturer that has about 40 percent of its workforce in the United States, likely would not pay the corporate minimum tax if current trends in the company’s profits and taxes continue, because it is already paying above 15 percent of its profits in taxes.
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blog August 2, 2022 Opponents of Inflation Reduction Act Call for Continued Tax Avoidance by Large Manufacturers
The biggest revenue-raising provision in the Inflation Reduction Act, the 15 percent minimum tax for corporations that have more than a billion dollars in profits, is under attack from members… -
blog August 2, 2022 Top Republican Tax-Writer Falsely Claims that Minimum Tax for Huge Corporations Is a Tax Hike on Middle-Class
Opponents of requiring corporations to pay even a minimum amount of taxes hold an unpopular position. But Sen. Mike Crapo, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee and a leader of that opposition, is using a one-sided and incomplete analysis to claim that the corporate minimum tax would raise taxes on low- and middle-income people.
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blog May 6, 2022 Most Senate Democrats Join Republicans in Calling for Corporate Tax Break
The vast majority of Senate Democrats joined their Republican colleagues in approving a new corporate tax break related to research in legislation that contains no offsetting corporate tax increases.
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blog February 7, 2022 Amazon Avoids More Than $5 Billion in Corporate Income Taxes, Reports 6 Percent Tax Rate on $35 Billion of US Income
Amazon avoided about $5.2 billion of federal income tax on its record $36 billion in U.S. pretax income for fiscal year 2021.
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blog February 1, 2022 Netflix Posts a Record $5.3 Billion in Profits and a Federal Tax Rate of Just 1.1 percent
Netflix’s 2021 financial report shows it doubled its profits to $5.3 billion from the previous year and reported an effective federal corporate income tax rate of 1.1 percent.
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blog November 18, 2021 Report Illustrates How 70 Corporations Could Be Affected by Minimum Tax Proposal in the Build Back Better Act
Amazon, Bank of America, Facebook, FedEx, General Motors, Google, Netflix, PayPal, T-Mobile and Verizon are just a few of the 70 corporations that would have paid more taxes under the Democrats’ proposed Corporate Profits Minimum Tax (CPMT) if it had been in effect in 2020 according to a new report from Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s office with estimates verified by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
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blog November 4, 2021 Democrats Seek to Eliminate the Stock Buyback Advantage
An important reform in the bill before Congress would tax stock buybacks in a way that is more comparable to how dividends are taxed. Corporations would be required to pay a tax equal to 1 percent of their stock repurchases, ensuring that profits shifted to shareholders in this way are subject to some federal tax.
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blog October 27, 2021 Senate Democrats’ Corporate Minimum Tax Could Address the Worst Corporate Tax Dodging
There is no reason corporations reporting hundreds of millions, but not billions, of dollars in profits to their shareholders should be allowed to avoid paying taxes. Nonetheless, the corporate minimum tax is a huge step forward and a valuable component of the Build Back Better plan.
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report September 17, 2021 Why Congress Should Reform the Federal Corporate Income Tax
It is reasonable for corporations (and, indirectly, their shareholders) to pay taxes to support the government investments that make their profits possible, such as the highways that facilitate the movement of goods and people, the education and health care systems that provide a productive workforce, the legal system and the protection of property, all of which are vital to commerce. Corporate tax avoidance allows wealthy and powerful individuals to reap enormous benefits from these investments without contributing their fair share to support them.
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blog August 6, 2021 Good Climate Policy Is Good Economic Policy, Too
Congress is proving that there does not need to be a trade-off between good climate policy and good economic policy. Direct hires aside, an even bolder government-backed effort to secure the future of our planet could create as many as 25 million net new jobs at its peak, as well as 5 million permanent jobs, many of which deal directly with domestic infrastructure and cannot be outsourced. With the U.S. economy still down 5.7 million jobs from pre-pandemic levels, climate legislation can be a critical investment for jumpstarting our economic recovery.
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report July 29, 2021 Corporate Tax Avoidance Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
Thirty-nine profitable corporations in the S&P 500 or Fortune 500 paid no federal income tax from 2018 through 2020, the first three years that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was in effect. Besides the 39 companies that paid nothing over three years, an additional 73 profitable corporations paid less than half the statutory corporate income tax rate of 21 percent established under TCJA. As a group, these 73 corporations paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 5.3 percent during these three years.
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blog July 16, 2021 Opposition to Biden’s Tax Plan Has Nothing to Do with Small Businesses or Family Farms
Special interests lobbying against President Joe Biden’s tax agenda claim that his proposed corporate income tax rate hike will harm small businesses and that his proposed capital gains tax reforms will hurt family farms. Both claims are absurd attempts by powerful interests to pretend they are defending the little guy.
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blog July 16, 2021 Washington Post Confirms that Corporations Are Bolder than Ever in Claiming Dubious Tax Breaks
IRS budget cuts starting in 2010 have forced the agency to reduce its audit rate for corporations with $20 billion or more in assets from 98 percent to 50 percent. The Washington Post found that during the decade, the amount of “uncertain tax benefits” claimed by corporations increased 43 percent, from $164 billion in 2010 to $235 billion in 2020.
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blog June 9, 2021 U.S. Should Pursue Biden’s Tax Legislation and International Tax Agreement on Separate Tracks
The agreement announced over the weekend from the finance leaders of the Group of 7 (G7) countries to allow governments to tax some corporate profits based on the location of sales and to implement a 15 percent global minimum tax is a major step forward—but in no way changes the need for Congress to enact President Joe Biden’s tax reforms right now.
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blog May 18, 2021 IRS Clock Runs Out, Saving 14 Large Companies $1.3 Billion
Each year, corporations publicly state that some of the tax breaks they claim are unlikely to withstand scrutiny from tax authorities. And each year, corporations report that they will keep some of the dubious tax breaks they declared in previous years simply because the statute of limitations ran out before tax authorities made any conclusions. This suggests that, perhaps because of cuts to its enforcement budget, the IRS is not even investigating corporations that publicly announce they have claimed tax breaks that tax authorities would likely find illegal.
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blog April 19, 2021 Nike’s Tax Avoidance Response Does not Dispute It Paid $0 in Federal Income Tax
It was (allegedly) P.T. Barnum who first said “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” But the public relations professionals at the Nike Corporation clearly disagree with this maxim. Last week, after multiple media outlets, including the New York Times, wrote about ITEP’s conclusion that Nike avoided federal corporate income taxes under the Trump tax law, the company contacted these news organizations to… change the subject.
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April 8, 2021 The High Cost of Corporate Tax Avoidance (Webinar)
When communities thrive, so do corporations. But when profitable corporations build their empires by exploiting the tax code, it is workers, the environment and our communities—not CEOs or shareholders—that are harmed. Amazon posted its highest U.S. profit ever for 2020, an unprecedented year defined by a pandemic. Yet the company sheltered more than half its profits from corporate taxes—legally. While the company may be one of the most recognizable tax avoiders, it’s not an outlier.
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report April 2, 2021 55 Corporations Paid $0 in Federal Taxes on 2020 Profits
At least 55 of the largest corporations in America paid no federal corporate income taxes in their most recent fiscal year despite enjoying substantial pretax profits in the United States. This continues a decades-long trend of corporate tax avoidance by the biggest U.S. corporations, and it appears to be the product of long-standing tax breaks preserved or expanded by the 2017 tax law as well as the CARES Act tax breaks enacted in the spring of 2020.
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report April 2, 2021 Corporate Tax Reform in the Wake of the Pandemic
Read as PDF Note: This report is adapted from written testimony submitted by Amy Hanauer before testifying in person to the Senate Budget Committee on March 25, 2021. In 2020,…