Below is a study of 280 of Fortune's list of the 500 largest American companies. Many people will be appalled to learn that a quarter of the companies in this study paid effective federal tax rates of less than 10 percent. Others may be surprised to learn that an almost equal number of US companies paid close to the full 35 percent official corporate tax rate - about 25%. While the federal corporate tax code ostensibly requires big corporations to pay a 35 percent corporate income tax rate, on average, the 280 corporations in the study paid only about half that amount - average 18.5%.
Over the 2008-10 period, these 280 companies earned almost $1.4 trillion in pretax profits in the United States. Had all of those profits been reported to the IRS and taxed at the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate, they would have paid $473 billion in income taxes over the three years. But instead, the companies as a group paid only about half that amount. The enormous amount they did not pay was due to the hundreds of billions of dollars in tax subsidies that they enjoyed.
More than half of the total tax- subsidy dollars over the three years — $114.8 billion — went to just 25 companies, with more than $1.9 billion in tax subsidies average.
Notably, 56 percent of the total tax subsidies went to just four industries: financial, utilities, tele-communications, and oil, gas & pipelines.
Most big corporations give their executives (and sometimes other employees) options to buy the company’s stock at a favorable price in the future. When those options are exercised, companies can take a tax deduction for the difference between what the employees paid for the stock and what it’s worth. These same 25 companies, mentioned above, enjoyed almost two-thirds of the total excess tax benefits from stock options received by all of the 280 companies, getting $8.1 billion of the $12.3 billion total.
http://www.ctj.org/corporatetaxdodge...gersReport.pdf
30 of these companies paid ZERO income taxes between 2008-2010 and many received a refund in the billions.
