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America’s 10 Largest Corporations Paid 9 Percent Average Tax Rate Last Year
Think Progress / News Report
Published: Wednesday 8 August 2012
“The 10 companies include Wall Street banks like Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase, oil companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron, and tech companies like Apple, IBM, and Microsoft.”
America’s 10 most profitable corporations paid an average corporate income tax rate of just 9 percent in 2011, according to a study from financial site NerdWallet reported by the Huffington Post. The 10 companies include Wall Street banks like Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase, oil companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron, and tech companies like Apple, IBM, and Microsoft.
The two companies with the lowest tax rates were both oil companies. ExxonMobil paid $1.5 billion in taxes on $73.3 billion in earnings, a tax rate of 2 percent. Chevron’s tax rate was just 4 percent. None of the companies paid anywhere near the 35 percent top corporate tax rate, providing more evidence to debunk claims that America’s corporate tax rate is stunting economic growth and job creation (Despite the high marginal rate, American corporations pay one of the lowest effective corporate tax rates in the world).
The study also calculated the overall amount the companies owed in both domestic and foreign taxes. This includes deferred taxes that will, theoretically, be paid in the future, once the companies bring foreign profits back to the United States. Apple, for instance, avoided $2.4 billion in American taxes last year by utilizing offshore tax havens.
If Republicans have their way, however, those deferred taxes may never be paid. Switching to a territorial tax system, a policy leading Republicans have considered, would allow corporations to repatriate foreign profits back to the United States nearly free of taxation, costing the country billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.
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ABOUT Travis Waldron
Travis Waldron is a reporter/blogger for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Travis grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and holds a BA in journalism and political science from the University of Kentucky. Before coming to ThinkProgress, he worked as a press aide at the Health Information Center and as a staffer on Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway’s 2010 Senate campaign. He also interned at National Journal’s Hotline and was a sports writer and political columnist at the Kentucky Kernel, the University of Kentucky’s daily student newspaper.
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4 comments on "America’s 10 Largest Corporations Paid 9 Percent Average Tax Rate Last Year"
August 08, 2012 6:55pm
History does tend to repeat itself. In the very late 1800's and early 1900's the US had a major backlash against the robber baron corporations of the day. They were busted down to size. Then they rose again in the 1920's only to be busted down to the Great Depression. In the more recent times, our government has written laws to coddle these newborn Corpeople. Now they are calling the shots and writing the laws to enslave We the People.
Will we rise up to fight back? No, because we are too dependent upon wages from the Corpeople. Back in the 1890's rich people with morals and intelligence knew that concentrating wealth in the hands of the few would eventually bring destruction to their doors. So for right or wrong, they put corporations in their rightful place. Will we see this again? I suggest not holding our breath. The people who could be the Muirs, Roosevelts, Pinchots, and Emerson's don't seem to want to rock the boat. They are content to send money to the starving in fill-in-the-blank-country than address the political and social problems in the US. It is almost as if the Gates, Buffetts, and the Hollywood millionaires are afraid of the Romneys, Kochs, and Corporations forming lynching party to get the rich who want 1900-style restraint and reform.
Boulder, CO
August 08, 2012 10:02pm
To make any progress on achieving a rational tax system, we will have to confront the central issue destroying this nation, money-in-politics. Tax reform in the public interest is only part of the logjam of legislation that is urgently needed on pending unresolved national issues. That logjam can only be broken in favor of the 99% once we get the money-givers out of politics and thereby end the legalized corruption of our political leaders.
The proposed first step to achieve that objective is to file multiple class-action lawsuits seeking to reverse two absurd Supreme Court decisions: Santa Clara ("corporations are persons"), 1886, and Buckley ("money is speech"), 1976. Hopefully one of the five conservative Justices will again want to step forward and go down in history as a true American patriot, as did Chief Justice Roberts recently when he wrote the decision defending Obamneycare.
As the cases advance toward the Supreme Court, widening public awareness of them will propel a tsunami of public pressure, outcry, and support from the at least 80% of American citizenry who are disgusted with the legalized corruption of our politicians by the obscene amounts of money-in-politics. And past Supreme Courts have been responsive to public opinion.
Once those decisions are reversed, the liberated Congress would be enabled to begin enacting legislation in the public interest, such as to provide for public financing of elections, free airtime for candidates, universal health care, raising needed revenue from those who can best afford to provide it, and exerting world leadership in preventing and mitigating global warming.
You can contact me via http://www.robertcohen.org/
August 08, 2012 12:48pm
I post the following after all articles like the above--
The USA and the world's banking and corporate malfeasance (including vulture capitalism), the income/wealth gap and social ills will never be solved without total sovereign government banking being established. The IMF turned over to the UN, for setting currency exchange rates only. Privately owned central banks must be replaced by government owned national banks. It must be done soon--watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swkq2E8mswI&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Inarguably, the ultimate goal of a fair and equitable society, is to provide that, the son or daughter of poor or middle class parent(s) has an opportunity at upward mobility equal to a son or daughter of rich parent(s). Therefore, the taxation structure--income and all other taxes and fees--must provide for a) access to good nutrition, b) access to adequate housing, c) access to quality health care and d) equal access to education and advanced education. Taking advantage of this equality, however is, then, up to the individual; and this individual will then, be a member of a very productive, advanced and enlightened society.
August 08, 2012 10:33am
Fortune 500 corporations are racketeering criminal enterprises.