And the media wonders why the 99% are angry? From MarketWatch:
The official federal corporate income tax rate in the U.S. is 35%, but plenty of the nation’s largest publicly traded companies are paying no taxes — even getting money back from the government in some cases — in years when they reap big profits, according to a new report.
Thirty of the 280 Fortune 500 companies studied paid zero in federal income taxes or enjoyed tax rebates in 2008, 2009 and 2010, according to the study by the left-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington-based nonprofit research and advocacy group, and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group.
And 78 of the 280 companies paid nothing in federal income taxes or enjoyed a tax rebate in at least one of those years. Those 78 companies, including General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE) and Pepco Holdings Inc. (NYSE:POM) , earned a total of $156 billion in pretax U.S. profits in the years they paid no income tax, yet received so many tax breaks that they reported negative taxes — a total of negative $22 billion, the study said…
For the three-year period, the average effective tax rate for all 280 companies was about 19%, but rates varied widely by company, from a low of negative 58% for Pepco Holdings to a high of 41% for Coventry Health Care Inc. (NYSE:CVH) , the study said. GE’s effective tax rate for that period was negative 45.%. Read the full report here
For the 30 companies that paid no taxes or got rebates, their effective tax rate averaged negative 7% in that period. At the other end of the spectrum, 71 companies paid an average effective rate of 32%. Another 67 companies paid an average effective tax rate of zero, the study said…
[continues at MarketWatch]
