Report: Telecoms Among Top Corporate Tax Dodgers

Many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters are a little vague on what they're mad about, but tax breaks for big corporations are usually high on their list.

Now a new report, “Corporate Taxpayers & Corporate Tax Dodgers,” is likely to add more fuel to the fire. Produced by Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the study examines the income taxes paid (or not paid) by 280 companies in the Fortune 500. The study’s authors note that:

“Seventy-eight of the 280 companies paid zero or less in federal income taxes in at least one year from 2008 to 2010. Twenty-five of these companies enjoyed multiple no-tax years, bringing the total number of no-tax years to 108. In the years they paid no income tax, these companies earned $156 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But instead of paying $55 billion in income taxes as the 35 percent corporate tax rate seems to require, these companies generated so many excess tax breaks that they reported negative taxes.”

In other words, thanks to tax loopholes, some of these companies paid nothing to the IRS.

Source: Freepress.org

Among the worst offenders were the big telecommunications companies:

• Between 2008 and 2010, Verizon received $12.3 billion in tax subsidies from the federal government and had an effective tax rate of –2.9 percent.

• In the same period, AT&T received nearly $14.5 billion in federal tax breaks, second only to Wells Fargo, which received nearly $18 billion. It had an effective tax rate of 8 percent.

• Comcast received $2 billion in tax breaks and had an effective tax rate of 20.6 percent.

• The telecom industry as a whole paid an effective tax rate of 8.2 percent during the 2008–2010 period — far below the standard 35 percent corporate tax rate.