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Corporations at Tax Time: Who's Good, Who's Bad, and Who's Very Ugly
Mar 31, 2011
It's tempting to blame government for our middle-income 15-20% tax rates. But the true culprits have documented their own guilt. Comprehensive financial reports called '10-Ks' are issued annually to the SEC by U.S. corporations. Amidst tedious pages of income, flow, and outgo, company accountants deftly balance management's desire to impress stockholders with the need to avoid self-incrimination.
PayUpNow.org has documented recent corporate tax activity from the 10-Ks. We took non-deferred federal tax payments over the past three years and analyzed the figures to determine which companies and industries consistently meet or avoid their obligations. The entire dataset is available on the PayUpNow.org website.
The GOOD seems to be in the health care industry, where Humana, Medco, Wellpoint, and United Health all paid taxes at rates close to the 35% corporate maximum over the past three years. Some nation-wide family favorites fared well, too. Home Depot, Walgreens, CVS, Kohl's, and Best Buy all approached the 35% rate three years running. Good places to shop.
Companies within specific industries were generally grouped together, as if they didn't want to fall far from the tree. In the middle of the pack were Costco, Walmart, and Target, all consistently paying in the mid-20% tax rate range. Even more noteworthy was the tech industry, which had several companies paying taxes at annual rates between 15 and 20 percent: Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, Google, Apple, Amazon, Cisco, and Comcast.
On to the BAD...Kraft Foods and Coca Cola paid less than 10% in taxes over the three-year period. Chevron paid 5%. Hewlett-Packard 3%. IBM 2%. Exxon 2%. Carnival 1%.
Can't get much worse, it seems. But it does. It gets UGLY.
Boeing and DuPont and Dow Chemical and Verizon all made profits three years in a row, but all received net refunds for the three-year period. The ugliest result comes from General Electric, which made pre-tax profits of $44 billion over three years but received almost $5 billion in refunds! So ugly, indeed, that the company buried its tax benefit (refund) strategy in a nondescript passage near the end of its 10-K.
The big picture:
The top 100 companies, with $5 trillion in 2010 revenue and $500 billion in pre-tax earnings, paid less than 10% last year in non-deferred federal taxes. If these 100 companies had paid the 35% tax designated by U.S. tax law, an additional $140 billion would have been collected in federal taxes in just one year. This is approximately equal to the total budget deficits for all 50 states.
Pay Up Now is committed to a focused national effort to refuse the business of the worst corporate tax offenders. We should not have to subsidize them with our own tax money.
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Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
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Paul Buchheit
Paul Buchheit is an advocate for social and economic justice, and the author of numerous papers on economic inequality and cognitive science. He was recently named one of 300 Living Peace and Justice Leaders and Models. He is the author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (2008) and "Disposable Americans: Extreme Capitalism and the Case for a Guaranteed Income" (2017). Contact email: paul (at) youdeservefacts.org.
It's tempting to blame government for our middle-income 15-20% tax rates. But the true culprits have documented their own guilt. Comprehensive financial reports called '10-Ks' are issued annually to the SEC by U.S. corporations. Amidst tedious pages of income, flow, and outgo, company accountants deftly balance management's desire to impress stockholders with the need to avoid self-incrimination.
PayUpNow.org has documented recent corporate tax activity from the 10-Ks. We took non-deferred federal tax payments over the past three years and analyzed the figures to determine which companies and industries consistently meet or avoid their obligations. The entire dataset is available on the PayUpNow.org website.
The GOOD seems to be in the health care industry, where Humana, Medco, Wellpoint, and United Health all paid taxes at rates close to the 35% corporate maximum over the past three years. Some nation-wide family favorites fared well, too. Home Depot, Walgreens, CVS, Kohl's, and Best Buy all approached the 35% rate three years running. Good places to shop.
Companies within specific industries were generally grouped together, as if they didn't want to fall far from the tree. In the middle of the pack were Costco, Walmart, and Target, all consistently paying in the mid-20% tax rate range. Even more noteworthy was the tech industry, which had several companies paying taxes at annual rates between 15 and 20 percent: Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, Google, Apple, Amazon, Cisco, and Comcast.
On to the BAD...Kraft Foods and Coca Cola paid less than 10% in taxes over the three-year period. Chevron paid 5%. Hewlett-Packard 3%. IBM 2%. Exxon 2%. Carnival 1%.
Can't get much worse, it seems. But it does. It gets UGLY.
Boeing and DuPont and Dow Chemical and Verizon all made profits three years in a row, but all received net refunds for the three-year period. The ugliest result comes from General Electric, which made pre-tax profits of $44 billion over three years but received almost $5 billion in refunds! So ugly, indeed, that the company buried its tax benefit (refund) strategy in a nondescript passage near the end of its 10-K.
The big picture:
The top 100 companies, with $5 trillion in 2010 revenue and $500 billion in pre-tax earnings, paid less than 10% last year in non-deferred federal taxes. If these 100 companies had paid the 35% tax designated by U.S. tax law, an additional $140 billion would have been collected in federal taxes in just one year. This is approximately equal to the total budget deficits for all 50 states.
Pay Up Now is committed to a focused national effort to refuse the business of the worst corporate tax offenders. We should not have to subsidize them with our own tax money.
Paul Buchheit
Paul Buchheit is an advocate for social and economic justice, and the author of numerous papers on economic inequality and cognitive science. He was recently named one of 300 Living Peace and Justice Leaders and Models. He is the author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (2008) and "Disposable Americans: Extreme Capitalism and the Case for a Guaranteed Income" (2017). Contact email: paul (at) youdeservefacts.org.
It's tempting to blame government for our middle-income 15-20% tax rates. But the true culprits have documented their own guilt. Comprehensive financial reports called '10-Ks' are issued annually to the SEC by U.S. corporations. Amidst tedious pages of income, flow, and outgo, company accountants deftly balance management's desire to impress stockholders with the need to avoid self-incrimination.
PayUpNow.org has documented recent corporate tax activity from the 10-Ks. We took non-deferred federal tax payments over the past three years and analyzed the figures to determine which companies and industries consistently meet or avoid their obligations. The entire dataset is available on the PayUpNow.org website.
The GOOD seems to be in the health care industry, where Humana, Medco, Wellpoint, and United Health all paid taxes at rates close to the 35% corporate maximum over the past three years. Some nation-wide family favorites fared well, too. Home Depot, Walgreens, CVS, Kohl's, and Best Buy all approached the 35% rate three years running. Good places to shop.
Companies within specific industries were generally grouped together, as if they didn't want to fall far from the tree. In the middle of the pack were Costco, Walmart, and Target, all consistently paying in the mid-20% tax rate range. Even more noteworthy was the tech industry, which had several companies paying taxes at annual rates between 15 and 20 percent: Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, Google, Apple, Amazon, Cisco, and Comcast.
On to the BAD...Kraft Foods and Coca Cola paid less than 10% in taxes over the three-year period. Chevron paid 5%. Hewlett-Packard 3%. IBM 2%. Exxon 2%. Carnival 1%.
Can't get much worse, it seems. But it does. It gets UGLY.
Boeing and DuPont and Dow Chemical and Verizon all made profits three years in a row, but all received net refunds for the three-year period. The ugliest result comes from General Electric, which made pre-tax profits of $44 billion over three years but received almost $5 billion in refunds! So ugly, indeed, that the company buried its tax benefit (refund) strategy in a nondescript passage near the end of its 10-K.
The big picture:
The top 100 companies, with $5 trillion in 2010 revenue and $500 billion in pre-tax earnings, paid less than 10% last year in non-deferred federal taxes. If these 100 companies had paid the 35% tax designated by U.S. tax law, an additional $140 billion would have been collected in federal taxes in just one year. This is approximately equal to the total budget deficits for all 50 states.
Pay Up Now is committed to a focused national effort to refuse the business of the worst corporate tax offenders. We should not have to subsidize them with our own tax money.
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