The Sorry State of Corporate Taxes
reportNEW REPORT: Many of America’s Most Profitable Corporations Pay Little or No Federal Income Taxes; Multinationals Pay Higher Rates Abroad Than in the U.S.
“Corporate lobbyists incessantly claim that our corporate tax rate is too high, and that it’s not ‘competitive’ with the rest of the world,” said Robert McIntyre, Director of Citizens for Tax Justice and the report’s lead author. “Our new report shows that both of these claims are false. Most of the biggest companies aren’t paying anywhere near 35 percent of their profits in taxes and far too many aren’t paying U.S. taxes at all. Most multinationals are paying lower tax rates here in the United States than they pay on their foreign operations.”
- 111 of the companies enjoyed at least one year in which their federal income tax was zero or less.
- 26 companies, including Boeing, General Electric, Priceline.com and Verizon, enjoyed negative income tax rates over the entire five-year period, despite combined pre-tax profits of $170 billion.
- Of the 125 multinational companies in this sample, two-thirds paid a lower U.S. tax rate than the rate they paid to foreign governments on their foreign profits. On average, their foreign effective tax rate was 12 percent larger than their U.S. effective rate.
- The total amount of federal income tax subsidies enjoyed by the 288 profitable corporations over the five years was $362 billion.
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