10 multibillion dollar corporations last year paid zero dollars in income taxes. Some even received a tax refund. Senator Bernie Sanders compiled a list of the 10 companies, and here it is.
Sanders compiled a list of some of some of the 10 worst corporate income tax avoiders:
1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.
2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.
3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.
5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.
6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.
7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.
8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.
9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.
List from http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12533
It’s about time Congress rewrote the U.S. Tax Code!
The title is misleading in other ways. It states the companies “paid zero dollars in income taxes” when really it should say “paid zero dollars in *federal* incomes taxes.”
Not to mention it states the report is for 2010, but references other years, like 2009 for Exxon.
Exxon also operates mainly in foreign countries, with only ~7.5% of their income being generated in the U.S (~2.6 billion in the U.S. vs ~32.2 billion abroad), which also means only a small percent of the $19 billion referenced in the report is actually taxable by the U.S. government. Exxon also still paid $110 million in state income tax and over $15 billion in foreign income tax. The numbers listed in this report aren’t incorrect, they’re just not represented appropriately. I didn’t look into the other 9 companies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were similarly misrepresented.
For the record, all the numbers and percents I stated were taken or derived from their 2010 10-K available at http://www.SEC.gov.
I love this article but I can’t post it with typos luke 2 trillion dollar bailout when the TARP was under 1 trillion.
The title is a little misleading. 1.1% isn’t much, but it’s not “no taxes.” Otherwise, good article.
I haven’t had a tax refund in 25 years. The refunds were confiscated by the Department of Education who even went to far as to capitalize the interest (7%) I owed on my student loans.
This shit is crazy. These companies shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this. It’s about time Congress implements a progressive tax.