The Hill: 26 top corporations paid subzero tax rate
media mentionBy Bernie Becker – 04/09/12 07:52 PM ET
Twenty-six Fortune 500 companies paid a tax rate of less than zero over a four-year span, according to a new study.
The report from Citizens for Tax Justice and the the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy updated an analysis released last year that found that 30 large corporations paid under a zero percent tax rate between 2008 and 2010, and that a broader group of Fortune 500 companies paid roughly half the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate.
In its update, CTJ found that DTE Energy, Honeywell, Wells Fargo and Dupont all paid a positive rate between 2008 and 2011. But General Electric, Boeing, Verizon, Duke Energy and more than 20 other companies still owed no net federal income taxes for that period.
Bob McIntyre, the director of CTJ, which is credited with helping to spur the 1986 tax overhaul, has argued that this sort of data illustrates that policymakers are wrong for pushing to lower corporate tax rates.
“These big, profitable corporations are continuing to shift their tax burden onto average Americans,” McIntyre said in a Monday statement. “This isn’t fair to the rest of us, makes no economic sense, and it’s part of the reason our government is running huge budget deficits.”
Still, the Obama administration (28 percent) and Republicans on Capitol Hill (25 percent) have floated the idea of a tax overhaul that does lower the top corporate rate.
When CTJ and ITEP released their study in November, some of the companies took issue with the findings. The two liberal groups only counted federal taxes in their analysis, while corporations will often include taxes deferred and taxes paid to state, local and foreign governments.
Boeing, for instance, said in response to last year’s report that it paid at least 22 percent and as much as 34 percent between 2008 and 2010.