Forum Post: 30 companies paid 'less than zero' taxes in recent years / Some even got tax returns

By Marisa Taylor

General Electric made big waves earlier in the year when The New York Times reported that the company paid no taxes in the U.S. in 2010, and in fact claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

How could a company that made $14.2 billion in profits worldwide avoid paying taxes? G.E. wasn’t the only one, 280 most profitable U.S. companies, 30 of them paid “less than zero” in taxes in the last three years, and 78 of the companies didn’t pay any federal income tax in at least one of the last three years.

While the statutory tax rate for corporations in the U.S. is SUPPOSED TO BE 35 percent.

Power company Pepco Holdings apparently had the lowest tax rate, at negative 57.6 percent. The report said some companies came up with so many tax breaks that their taxes were in effect "negative," and they even received tax rebate checks from the U.S. Treasury. It explained that "negative tax rates" mean that the company made more after taxes than before taxes.

Wells Fargo received the most in tax subsidies among all 280 companies, raking in nearly $18 billion in tax breaks in the last three years. All 280 companies took in a combined $222.7 billion in tax subsidies over the last three years.

"But today corporate tax loopholes are so out of control that most Americans can rightfully complain, ‘I pay more federal income taxes than General Electric, Boeing, DuPont, Wells Fargo, Verizon, etc., etc., all put together.’” Six Republicans and six Democrats struggles to over how to cut the U.S. budget deficit. By Nov. 23 they need save at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years, or budget cuts can slice deeply into spending for defense and for domestic prorgams.

“This is not an ‘anti-business’ report,” the authors of the study wrote. “On the contrary, we, like most Americans, want our businesses to do well…. But we also need a much better balance when it comes to taxes. Just as workers pay their fair share of taxes on their earnings, so should successful businesses pay their fair share on their success.

Please read full article at: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/03/8617728-30-companies-paid-less-than-zero-taxes-in-recent-years

Thank you,

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-Ryan Crangle crangle.ryan@gmail.com