These assholes have nothing to complain about. They have to be out of their minds to whine about a few untermenchen eating steak when they enjoy an utterly unfettered economic environment which enables them to turn profits they will find no where else in the world. What a bunch of sickos.
Mitt Romney, former Republican candidate for President—who has a floor of tax lawyers available to him—keeps a race horse stabled abroad for which he is somehow legally able to divert almost a half-million dollars of his annual income taxes for its care and feeding. Legal tax diversions like this are quite common among America’s wealthiest and the corporations from which they earn their incomes—and they are tolerated nowhere else in the developed world. That’s what makes America so great for them. And now they complain about some poor schmuck or schmuckette eating filet mignon—“on their dime.”
Well, it’s not their dime. Not by a longshot.
Profitable corporations are supposed to pay a 35 percent federal income tax rate on their U.S. profits. But many corporations pay far less, or nothing at all, because of the many tax loopholes and special breaks they enjoy. The following report documents just how successful many Fortune 500 corporations have been at using these loopholes and special breaks over the past five years.
The report looks at the profits and U.S. federal income taxes of the 288 Fortune 500 companies that have been consistently profitable in each of the five years between 2008 and 2012, excluding companies that experienced even one unprofitable year during this period. Most of these companies were included in a November 2011 report, Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers, which looked at the years 2008 through 2010. A new report is broader, in that it includes companies, such as Facebook, that have entered the Fortune 500 since 2011, and narrower, in that it excludes some companies that were profitable during 2008 to 2010 but lost money in 2011 or 2012.
Some Key Findings:
• As a group, the 288 corporations examined paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 19.4 percent over the five-year period — far less than the statutory 35 percent tax rate.
• Twenty-six of the corporations, including Boeing, General Electric, Priceline and Verizon, paid no federal income tax at all over the five-year period. A third of the corporations (93) paid an effective tax rate of less than ten percent over that period.
• Of those corporations in the sample with significant offshore profits, two-thirds paid higher corporate tax rates to foreign governments where they operate than they paid in the U.S. on their U.S.profits.
These findings refute the prevailing view inside the Washington, D.C. Beltway that America’s corporate income tax is more burdensome than the corporate income taxes levied by other countries, and that this purported (but false) excess burden somehow makes the U.S. “uncompetitive.”
• The sectors with the lowest effective corporate tax rates over the five-year period were utilities (2.9 percent), industrial machinery (4.3 percent), telecommunications (9.8 percent), oil, gas and pipelines (14.4 percent), transportation (16.4 percent), aerospace and defense (16.7 percent) and financial (18.8 percent).
• The tax breaks claimed by these companies are highly concentrated in the hands of a few very large corporations. Just 25 companies claimed $174 billion in tax breaks over the five years between 2008 and 2012. That’s almost half the $364 billion in tax subsidies claimed by all of the 288 companies in the sample.
• Five companies — Wells Fargo, AT&T, IBM, General Electric, and Verizon — enjoyed over $77 billion in tax breaks during this five-year period.
Source: Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy
