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The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Employee

Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

This is bunk. The percentage of taxation on profits doesn't decrease. :rofl

Ya'll really need to stop reading this propaganda.

I love Leftists scream about, "loopholes", too. Where are those loopholes? Better question, what are they. I want some of that, too.

Did you even read the information? The point was and is that the rates on the books mean precious little compared to the actual taxes that many companies actually pay. That is not BUNK - it is REALITY.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

yes our higher tax rates are causing the mexican people to find ways to illegally move into and reside within the USA [/sarcasm]
could the reason for business relocation to mexico be the lower cost of labor there? of course not, it must only be the tax rate you insist
and yet you seem not to understand that if the tax laws make huge portions of revenues be found as untaxable income - and our tax laws are rife with such loopholes - then excluding those revenues from being subject to taxation far offsets any difference in tax rates
a reality you conveniently ignore ... apparently due to your "mastery" of things economic
and i do understand why you want me to quit responding rebuttals to your lame posts. you do not want such stupidity exposed

Again, you read but do not understand. I did not say anything about business relocating to mexico. I only suggested where they might wish to pay a majority of their taxes on income earned IN BOTH COUNTRIES!!!!!

You do realize there is no such thing as 'untaxable income' in this country? All income earned worldwide is subjected to Federal income tax laws placed on both individuals and corporations.

However, the coup de grace in your last post is when you inadvertently admit that I am correct, when you state, '...then excluding those revenues from being subject to taxation far offsets any differences in tax rates'. You just admitted that since 'tax loopholes' exist (which they don't but my view is moot to your commentary), companies will use this so call 'untaxable income' (another figment of your imagination, but my facts are again moot) to offset 'any difference in tax rates'. You just said that because tax laws are so 'lax' in this country, multinational corporations do not have to shop corporate tax rates amongst countries because ours are the lowest anyway (a false statement). Since you believe this, you inadvertently proved my original point. While we both come to the same conclusion, we just did it from different angles (your angle is still incorrect). All I can say is thanks for helping me prove you wrong in your mistaken belief that companies do not shop tax rates between countries.

My economic mastery reigns supreme! Apparently my debating mastery is more supreme as well.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

MaggieD you have been my savior twice today;-) mwah!!!!
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

This is all well and fine, now just tell me what the federal tax payments have to do with state budgets ???

Here is why. The Governor of our state just delivered his budget message and he is cuting back revenue sharing funds by over $300 milion dollars. One big reason: the revenue sharing monies and other federal programs to his state have been cut in Washington. If Washington has more money, states get more money in revenue sharing... then cities and towns get more money.

One big reason the feds have less is major corporations not paying the actual rates that apply to them.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

Did you even read the information? The point was and is that the rates on the books mean precious little compared to the actual taxes that many companies actually pay. That is not BUNK - it is REALITY.

Corporations pay 35% on their reported profit. If that profit is $10, or a $1,000,000. The rate doesn't go down.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

Here is why. The Governor of our state just delivered his budget message and he is cuting back revenue sharing funds by over $300 milion dollars. One big reason: the revenue sharing monies and other federal programs to his state have been cut in Washington. If Washington has more money, states get more money in revenue sharing... then cities and towns get more money.

One big reason the feds have less is major corporations not paying the actual rates that apply to them.

10% unemployment doesn't have anything to do with that? Billions spent on unemployment benefits just might be cutting into those state monies. Maybe.

Meanwhile, back here in the real world, companies are paying in less revenue, because they are taking in less revenue. Profits are down, hence tax revenues are going to be down. Just common sense stuff.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

Corporations pay 35% on their reported profit. If that profit is $10, or a $1,000,000. The rate doesn't go down.

You did not even read the information. The point of the article was NOT what some rate on a piece of paper says it is. The point was that DESPITE what the piece of paper says, many coporations are paying far far less - some nothing at all.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

$78,000 is the second highest salary in the U.S. -- Where'd you get that winner?




I get it, you're one of the people who don't like to pay taxes. I guess the hundred of public services that benefit you, directly or indirectly, every single day all just magically happen.

So, please tell name one privately owned business that makes no use of public services--including roads, streets, police, fire... Is their home office on the moon?

What was your tax bill for 2010? You don't have to be specific, you can just give us a round number. Thanks!
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

Corporations pay 35% on their reported profit. If that profit is $10, or a $1,000,000. The rate doesn't go down.


Corporate Tax Revenues Nearing Historic Lows As A Percentage Of GDP, Report Says

"While the U.S.'s top corporate tax rate of 35 percent is one of the highest in the world, the amount corporations actually end up forking over to the government is much lower, sometime as low as 4 percent. This is due to a dizzying number of deductions, write-offs, and other accounting tricks that allow corporations to legally reduce their tax burden."
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

Corporations pay 35% on their reported profit. If that profit is $10, or a $1,000,000. The rate doesn't go down.

Um, that's a very limited understanding of how corporate taxes work.

The Fortune 500 don't pay taxes in the same sense that individuals pay taxes.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

here it is

But of the 275 Fortune 500 companies that made a profit each year from 2001 to 2003 and for which adequate information to draw conclusions is publicly available, only a small proportion paid federal income taxes anywhere near that statutory 35 percent tax rate. The vast majority paid considerably less.

In fact, in 2002 and 2003, the average effective tax rate for all of these 275 companies was less than half the statutory 35 percent rate. Over the 2001-2003 period, effective tax rates ranged from a low of -59.6 percent for Pepco Holdings to a high of 34.5 percent for CVS.

Over the three-year period, the average effective rate for all 275 companies dropped by a fifth, from 21.4 percent in 2001 to 17.2 percent in 2002-2003.

The statistics are startling:

•Eighty-two of the 275 companies, almost a third of the total, paid zero or less in federal income taxes in at least one year from 2001 to 2003. In the years they paid no income tax, these companies earned $102 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But instead of paying $35.6 billion in income taxes as the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate seems to require, these companies generated so many excess tax breaks that they received outright tax rebate checks from the U.S. Treasury, totaling $12.6 billion. These companies' "negative tax rates" meant that they made more after taxes than before taxes in those no-tax years.
•Twenty-eight corporations enjoyed negative federal income tax rates over the entire 2001-2003 period. These companies, whose pretax U.S. profits totaled $44.9 billion over the three years, included, among others: Pepco Holdings (-59.6 percent tax rate), Prudential Financial (-46.2 percent), ITT Industries (-22.3 percent), Boeing (-18.8 percent), Unisys (-16.0 percent), Fluor (-9.2 percent) and CSX (-7.5 percent), the company previously headed by current Secretary of the Treasury John Snow.
•In 2003 alone, 46 companies paid zero or less in federal income taxes. These 46 companies told their shareholders they earned U.S. pretax profits in 2003 of $42.6 billion, yet they received tax rebates totaling $5.4 billion. Almost as many companies, 42, paid no tax in 2002, reporting $43.5 billion in pretax profits, yet receiving $4.9 billion in tax rebates. From 2001 to 2003, the number of no-tax companies jumped from 33 to 46, an increase of 40 percent.
•In 2001, the Treasury paid corporations $40 billion in tax refunds, a third more than the 1998-2000 average.
•Then in 2002 and 2003, after the law was changed to expand tax subsidies and make it easier for corporations to carry back excess tax breaks to earlier years, corporate tax refunds skyrocketed to an average of $63 billion a year - more than double the 1998-2000 average.
Corporations are now paying the lowest levels of taxes in the post-World War II era. In fiscal 2002 and 2003, federal corporate incomes taxes dropped to their lowest sustained level as a share of the economy since World War II. Only a single year during the early Reagan administration was lower.
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan fully abandoned his earlier policy of showering tax breaks on corporations. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 closed tens of billions of dollars in corporate loopholes, so that by 1988, the overall effective corporate tax rate for large corporations was up to 26.5 percent. That improvement occurred even though the statutory corporate tax rate was cut from 46 percent to 34 percent as part of the 1986 reforms.

In the 1990s, however, many corporations began to find ways around the 1986 reforms, abetted by tax-shelter schemes devised by major accounting firms.

Effective corporate tax rates then plummeted, thanks to Bush administration-backed tax breaks passed in 2002 and 2003, continued corporate offshore tax-sheltering, and the refusal of the Congress and White House to crack down on even the most abusive inherited corporate tax-sheltering activities.

Corporate taxes paid for more than a quarter of federal outlays in the 1950s and a fifth in the 1960s. They began to decline during the Nixon administration, yet even by the second half of the 1990s, corporate taxes still covered 11 percent of the cost of federal programs. But in fiscal years 2002 and 2003, corporate taxes paid for a mere 6 percent of federal expenses.

Billions and billions
Over the 2001-2003 period, the 275 Fortune 500 companies that were profitable each year and for which adequate information is publicly available earned almost $1.1 trillion in pretax profits in the United States. Had all of those profits been reported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and taxed at the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate, then the 275 companies would have paid $370 billion in income taxes over the three years. But instead, the companies reported only about half of their profits - $557 billion - to the IRS. Instead of a 35 percent tax rate, the companies as a group paid a three-year effective tax rate of only 18.4 percent.

In 2002 and 2003, the 275 companies sheltered more than half of their profits from tax. They told their shareholders they earned $739 billion in those two years, but they paid taxes on less than half of that, only $363 billion.

Loopholes and other tax subsidies cut taxes for the 275 companies by $43.4 billion in 2001, $60.8 billion in 2002 and $71.0 billion in 2003, for a total of $175.2 billion in tax breaks over the three years.

Half of the total tax-break dollars over the three years - $87.1 billion - went to just 25 companies, each with more than a billion-and-a-half dollars in tax breaks.

General Electric topped the list of corporate tax break recipients, with $9.5 billion in tax breaks over the three years.

Industrial divide
Effective tax rates varied widely by industry. Over the 2001-2003 period, industry effective tax rates for the 275 corporations ranged from a low of 1.6 percent to a high of 27.7 percent.

In 2003, the range of industry tax rates was even greater, ranging from a low of -30.0 percent (a negative rate) up to a high of 27.9 percent.

•Aerospace and defense companies enjoyed the lowest effective tax rate over the three years, paying only 1.6 percent of their profits in federal income taxes. This industry's taxes declined sharply over the three years, falling to -30.0 percent of profits in 2003.
•Other very low-tax industries, paying less than half the statutory 35 percent tax rate over the entire 2001-2003 period, included: transportation (4.3 percent), industrial and farm equipment (6.2 percent), telecommunications (7.5 percent), electronics and electrical equipment (10.8 percent), petroleum and pipelines (13.3 percent), miscellaneous services (14.4 percent), gas and electric utilities (14.4 percent), computers, office equipment, software and data (16.0 percent), and metals & metal products (17.4 percent).
•Not a single industry paid an effective tax rate of more than 29 percent, either for the entire three-year period or in any given year.
Within industries, effective tax rates also varied widely. For example, over the three-year period, average tax rates on oil companies ranged from 3.0 percent for Devon Energy up to 31.4 percent on Marathon Oil. Among aerospace and defense companies, three-year effective tax rates ranged from a low of -18.8 percent for Boeing up to a high of 25.0 percent for General Dynamics.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

You did not even read the information. The point of the article was NOT what some rate on a piece of paper says it is. The point was that DESPITE what the piece of paper says, many coporations are paying far far less - some nothing at all.

LOL...how many times do I have to tell you? The rate, on the dollar, doesn't go down!. If a company doesn't pay taxes--which is bull****, because all companies pay into payroll taxes, SS and MC--then that company didn't report any profit. That's the only way for a company to avoid paying corporate taxes. And, any large corporation that doesn't report any profit for a few years can be expected to be audited by the IRS thugs.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

Um, that's a very limited understanding of how corporate taxes work.

The Fortune 500 don't pay taxes in the same sense that individuals pay taxes.

Ok, using the actual tax code and not an oped, explain to me how corporate taxes work.

I can't wait to hear this.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

LOL...how many times do I have to tell you? The rate, on the dollar, doesn't go down!. If a company doesn't pay taxes--which is bull****, because all companies pay into payroll taxes, SS and MC--then that company didn't report any profit. That's the only way for a company to avoid paying corporate taxes. And, any large corporation that doesn't report any profit for a few years can be expected to be audited by the IRS thugs.

What you are TELLING me is 100% contrary to the facts that have been presented, the figures that have been presented and the information that has been presented. if you have your own set of facts - present them and stop TELLING ME what you think because that only takes you so far and you are miles past that point now. This is the time for supportive inrormation. for data, for hard and cold facts. I have given them to you. All you have given here is what you want to TELL us.

The Gap Between Statutory and Real Corporate Tax Rates

But of the 275 Fortune 500 companies that made a profit each year from 2001 to 2003 and for which adequate information to draw conclusions is publicly available, only a small proportion paid federal income taxes anywhere near that statutory 35 percent tax rate. The vast majority paid considerably less.

In fact, in 2002 and 2003, the average effective tax rate for all of these 275 companies was less than half the statutory 35 percent rate. Over the 2001-2003 period, effective tax rates ranged from a low of -59.6 percent for Pepco Holdings to a high of 34.5 percent for CVS.

Over the three-year period, the average effective rate for all 275 companies dropped by a fifth, from 21.4 percent in 2001 to 17.2 percent in 2002-2003.

The statistics are startling:

•Eighty-two of the 275 companies, almost a third of the total, paid zero or less in federal income taxes in at least one year from 2001 to 2003. In the years they paid no income tax, these companies earned $102 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But instead of paying $35.6 billion in income taxes as the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate seems to require, these companies generated so many excess tax breaks that they received outright tax rebate checks from the U.S. Treasury, totaling $12.6 billion. These companies' "negative tax rates" meant that they made more after taxes than before taxes in those no-tax years.
•Twenty-eight corporations enjoyed negative federal income tax rates over the entire 2001-2003 period. These companies, whose pretax U.S. profits totaled $44.9 billion over the three years, included, among others: Pepco Holdings (-59.6 percent tax rate), Prudential Financial (-46.2 percent), ITT Industries (-22.3 percent), Boeing (-18.8 percent), Unisys (-16.0 percent), Fluor (-9.2 percent) and CSX (-7.5 percent), the company previously headed by current Secretary of the Treasury John Snow.
•In 2003 alone, 46 companies paid zero or less in federal income taxes. These 46 companies told their shareholders they earned U.S. pretax profits in 2003 of $42.6 billion, yet they received tax rebates totaling $5.4 billion. Almost as many companies, 42, paid no tax in 2002, reporting $43.5 billion in pretax profits, yet receiving $4.9 billion in tax rebates. From 2001 to 2003, the number of no-tax companies jumped from 33 to 46, an increase of 40 percent.
•In 2001, the Treasury paid corporations $40 billion in tax refunds, a third more than the 1998-2000 average.
•Then in 2002 and 2003, after the law was changed to expand tax subsidies and make it easier for corporations to carry back excess tax breaks to earlier years, corporate tax refunds skyrocketed to an average of $63 billion a year - more than double the 1998-2000 average.
Corporations are now paying the lowest levels of taxes in the post-World War II era. In fiscal 2002 and 2003, federal corporate incomes taxes dropped to their lowest sustained level as a share of the economy since World War II. Only a single year during the early Reagan administration was lower.
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan fully abandoned his earlier policy of showering tax breaks on corporations. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 closed tens of billions of dollars in corporate loopholes, so that by 1988, the overall effective corporate tax rate for large corporations was up to 26.5 percent. That improvement occurred even though the statutory corporate tax rate was cut from 46 percent to 34 percent as part of the 1986 reforms.

In the 1990s, however, many corporations began to find ways around the 1986 reforms, abetted by tax-shelter schemes devised by major accounting firms.

Effective corporate tax rates then plummeted, thanks to Bush administration-backed tax breaks passed in 2002 and 2003, continued corporate offshore tax-sheltering, and the refusal of the Congress and White House to crack down on even the most abusive inherited corporate tax-sheltering activities.

Corporate taxes paid for more than a quarter of federal outlays in the 1950s and a fifth in the 1960s. They began to decline during the Nixon administration, yet even by the second half of the 1990s, corporate taxes still covered 11 percent of the cost of federal programs. But in fiscal years 2002 and 2003, corporate taxes paid for a mere 6 percent of federal expenses.

Billions and billions
Over the 2001-2003 period, the 275 Fortune 500 companies that were profitable each year and for which adequate information is publicly available earned almost $1.1 trillion in pretax profits in the United States. Had all of those profits been reported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and taxed at the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate, then the 275 companies would have paid $370 billion in income taxes over the three years. But instead, the companies reported only about half of their profits - $557 billion - to the IRS. Instead of a 35 percent tax rate, the companies as a group paid a three-year effective tax rate of only 18.4 percent.

In 2002 and 2003, the 275 companies sheltered more than half of their profits from tax. They told their shareholders they earned $739 billion in those two years, but they paid taxes on less than half of that, only $363 billion.

Loopholes and other tax subsidies cut taxes for the 275 companies by $43.4 billion in 2001, $60.8 billion in 2002 and $71.0 billion in 2003, for a total of $175.2 billion in tax breaks over the three years.

Half of the total tax-break dollars over the three years - $87.1 billion - went to just 25 companies, each with more than a billion-and-a-half dollars in tax breaks.

General Electric topped the list of corporate tax break recipients, with $9.5 billion in tax breaks over the three years.

Industrial divide
Effective tax rates varied widely by industry. Over the 2001-2003 period, industry effective tax rates for the 275 corporations ranged from a low of 1.6 percent to a high of 27.7 percent.

In 2003, the range of industry tax rates was even greater, ranging from a low of -30.0 percent (a negative rate) up to a high of 27.9 percent.

•Aerospace and defense companies enjoyed the lowest effective tax rate over the three years, paying only 1.6 percent of their profits in federal income taxes. This industry's taxes declined sharply over the three years, falling to -30.0 percent of profits in 2003.
•Other very low-tax industries, paying less than half the statutory 35 percent tax rate over the entire 2001-2003 period, included: transportation (4.3 percent), industrial and farm equipment (6.2 percent), telecommunications (7.5 percent), electronics and electrical equipment (10.8 percent), petroleum and pipelines (13.3 percent), miscellaneous services (14.4 percent), gas and electric utilities (14.4 percent), computers, office equipment, software and data (16.0 percent), and metals & metal products (17.4 percent).
•Not a single industry paid an effective tax rate of more than 29 percent, either for the entire three-year period or in any given year.
Within industries, effective tax rates also varied widely. For example, over the three-year period, average tax rates on oil companies ranged from 3.0 percent for Devon Energy up to 31.4 percent on Marathon Oil. Among aerospace and defense companies, three-year effective tax rates ranged from a low of -18.8 percent for Boeing up to a high of 25.0 percent for General Dynamics.
 
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Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

Corporate Tax Revenues Nearing Historic Lows As A Percentage Of GDP, Report Says

"While the U.S.'s top corporate tax rate of 35 percent is one of the highest in the world, the amount corporations actually end up forking over to the government is much lower, sometime as low as 4 percent. This is due to a dizzying number of deductions, write-offs, and other accounting tricks that allow corporations to legally reduce their tax burden."

No amount of deduction, or write-offs are going to reduce the tax rate.

Deductions are allowed to be whittled off gross profit, because at least one person, at sometime in history thought it would be a good idea not to tax a corporation on money that it doen't have.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

What you are TELLING me is 100% contrary to the facts that have been presented, the figures that have been presented and the information that has been presented. if you have your own set of facts - present them and stop TELLING ME what you think because that only takes you so far and you are miles past that point now. This is the time for supportive inrormation. for data, for hard and cold facts. I have given them to you. All you have given here is what you want to TELL us.

The Gap Between Statutory and Real Corporate Tax Rates

Show me, in the tax code, where those facts are.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

Show me, in the tax code, where those facts are.

Do you have trouble reading what is presented to you in plain English?

from the atrticle on the subject at Wikipedia

Federal corporate income tax is imposed at graduated rates. The lower rate brackets are phased out at higher rates of income. All taxable income is subject to tax at 34% or 35% where taxable income exceeds $335,000

Again, here it is for you. Lots of companies, lots of profits reported to stockholders, and lot of cases of doing the very opposite of what you claim is happening.

But of the 275 Fortune 500 companies that made a profit each year from 2001 to 2003 and for which adequate information to draw conclusions is publicly available, only a small proportion paid federal income taxes anywhere near that statutory 35 percent tax rate. The vast majority paid considerably less.

In fact, in 2002 and 2003, the average effective tax rate for all of these 275 companies was less than half the statutory 35 percent rate. Over the 2001-2003 period, effective tax rates ranged from a low of -59.6 percent for Pepco Holdings to a high of 34.5 percent for CVS.

Over the three-year period, the average effective rate for all 275 companies dropped by a fifth, from 21.4 percent in 2001 to 17.2 percent in 2002-2003.

The statistics are startling:

•Eighty-two of the 275 companies, almost a third of the total, paid zero or less in federal income taxes in at least one year from 2001 to 2003. In the years they paid no income tax, these companies earned $102 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But instead of paying $35.6 billion in income taxes as the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate seems to require, these companies generated so many excess tax breaks that they received outright tax rebate checks from the U.S. Treasury, totaling $12.6 billion. These companies' "negative tax rates" meant that they made more after taxes than before taxes in those no-tax years.
•Twenty-eight corporations enjoyed negative federal income tax rates over the entire 2001-2003 period. These companies, whose pretax U.S. profits totaled $44.9 billion over the three years, included, among others: Pepco Holdings (-59.6 percent tax rate), Prudential Financial (-46.2 percent), ITT Industries (-22.3 percent), Boeing (-18.8 percent), Unisys (-16.0 percent), Fluor (-9.2 percent) and CSX (-7.5 percent), the company previously headed by current Secretary of the Treasury John Snow.
•In 2003 alone, 46 companies paid zero or less in federal income taxes. These 46 companies told their shareholders they earned U.S. pretax profits in 2003 of $42.6 billion, yet they received tax rebates totaling $5.4 billion. Almost as many companies, 42, paid no tax in 2002, reporting $43.5 billion in pretax profits, yet receiving $4.9 billion in tax rebates. From 2001 to 2003, the number of no-tax companies jumped from 33 to 46, an increase of 40 percent.
•In 2001, the Treasury paid corporations $40 billion in tax refunds, a third more than the 1998-2000 average.
•Then in 2002 and 2003, after the law was changed to expand tax subsidies and make it easier for corporations to carry back excess tax breaks to earlier years, corporate tax refunds skyrocketed to an average of $63 billion a year - more than double the 1998-2000 average.
Corporations are now paying the lowest levels of taxes in the post-World War II era. In fiscal 2002 and 2003, federal corporate incomes taxes dropped to their lowest sustained level as a share of the economy since World War II. Only a single year during the early Reagan administration was lower.
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan fully abandoned his earlier policy of showering tax breaks on corporations. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 closed tens of billions of dollars in corporate loopholes, so that by 1988, the overall effective corporate tax rate for large corporations was up to 26.5 percent. That improvement occurred even though the statutory corporate tax rate was cut from 46 percent to 34 percent as part of the 1986 reforms.

In the 1990s, however, many corporations began to find ways around the 1986 reforms, abetted by tax-shelter schemes devised by major accounting firms.

Effective corporate tax rates then plummeted, thanks to Bush administration-backed tax breaks passed in 2002 and 2003, continued corporate offshore tax-sheltering, and the refusal of the Congress and White House to crack down on even the most abusive inherited corporate tax-sheltering activities.

Corporate taxes paid for more than a quarter of federal outlays in the 1950s and a fifth in the 1960s. They began to decline during the Nixon administration, yet even by the second half of the 1990s, corporate taxes still covered 11 percent of the cost of federal programs. But in fiscal years 2002 and 2003, corporate taxes paid for a mere 6 percent of federal expenses.

Billions and billions
Over the 2001-2003 period, the 275 Fortune 500 companies that were profitable each year and for which adequate information is publicly available earned almost $1.1 trillion in pretax profits in the United States. Had all of those profits been reported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and taxed at the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate, then the 275 companies would have paid $370 billion in income taxes over the three years. But instead, the companies reported only about half of their profits - $557 billion - to the IRS. Instead of a 35 percent tax rate, the companies as a group paid a three-year effective tax rate of only 18.4 percent.

In 2002 and 2003, the 275 companies sheltered more than half of their profits from tax. They told their shareholders they earned $739 billion in those two years, but they paid taxes on less than half of that, only $363 billion.

Loopholes and other tax subsidies cut taxes for the 275 companies by $43.4 billion in 2001, $60.8 billion in 2002 and $71.0 billion in 2003, for a total of $175.2 billion in tax breaks over the three years.

Half of the total tax-break dollars over the three years - $87.1 billion - went to just 25 companies, each with more than a billion-and-a-half dollars in tax breaks.

General Electric topped the list of corporate tax break recipients, with $9.5 billion in tax breaks over the three years.

Industrial divide
Effective tax rates varied widely by industry. Over the 2001-2003 period, industry effective tax rates for the 275 corporations ranged from a low of 1.6 percent to a high of 27.7 percent.

In 2003, the range of industry tax rates was even greater, ranging from a low of -30.0 percent (a negative rate) up to a high of 27.9 percent.

•Aerospace and defense companies enjoyed the lowest effective tax rate over the three years, paying only 1.6 percent of their profits in federal income taxes. This industry's taxes declined sharply over the three years, falling to -30.0 percent of profits in 2003.
•Other very low-tax industries, paying less than half the statutory 35 percent tax rate over the entire 2001-2003 period, included: transportation (4.3 percent), industrial and farm equipment (6.2 percent), telecommunications (7.5 percent), electronics and electrical equipment (10.8 percent), petroleum and pipelines (13.3 percent), miscellaneous services (14.4 percent), gas and electric utilities (14.4 percent), computers, office equipment, software and data (16.0 percent), and metals & metal products (17.4 percent).
•Not a single industry paid an effective tax rate of more than 29 percent, either for the entire three-year period or in any given year.
Within industries, effective tax rates also varied widely. For example, over the three-year period, average tax rates on oil companies ranged from 3.0 percent for Devon Energy up to 31.4 percent on Marathon Oil. Among aerospace and defense companies, three-year effective tax rates ranged from a low of -18.8 percent for Boeing up to a high of 25.0 percent for General Dynamics.
 
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Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

and the teachers have agreed to this. so what's the governor's problem?

He's being directed by the Koch brothers to break unions to weaken the Dems in 2012. This is what happens when the GOP power-brokers seek out weak-minded people like Sarah Palin to run for state office.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

No amount of deduction, or write-offs are going to reduce the tax rate.

Deductions are allowed to be whittled off gross profit, because at least one person, at sometime in history thought it would be a good idea not to tax a corporation on money that it doen't have.

they do reduce the effective tax rate though. semantics.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

Government has a problem enforcing its own convoluted tax code? That's surprising.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

Do you have trouble reading what is presented to you in plain English?

from the atrticle on the subject at Wikipedia



Again, here it is for you. Lots of companies, lots of profits reported to stockholders, and lot of cases of doing the very opposite of what you claim is happening.

Your link is entitled, "Corporate Welfare", then talks about taxes. I'm purdy sure that they no less about the tax code than you do, which ain't sayin' much.

Are you going to go along with the notion that deductions and write-offs cause the tax rate to go down? Hey, don't get me wrong, I wish like hell it did, but that's just not the case. That's just corporate income taxes, we haven't even gotten into windfall profits tax.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

they do reduce the effective tax rate though. semantics.

Actually, they don't, but you can believe what you want.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

Government has a problem enforcing its own convoluted tax code? That's surprising.

Trust me, they don't have any problem at all. They hired 10,000 new auditers last year.
 
Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

Reply to the myth about America having the "highest corporate taxes". Sorry, that would be japan. 40% I think.
 
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Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo

Actually, they don't, but you can believe what you want.

um.....do you know what an effective tax rate is?
 
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