The Tax Rates of America’s Biggest Companies
Using company documents filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, Nerdwallet created a tool that allows people to see how much the largest 500 American companies paid in taxes last year, what their CEOs were paid, and what the average employee pay is. In an email, Nerdwallet’s vice president of products Stephanie Wei said, “As both presidential candidates are proposing to lower the corporate tax rate, we wanted to provide voters with information on what companies actually pay.”
Pick your company of choice, and give it a whirl: Wal-Mart paid a tax rate of 19 percent, Apple paid a tax rate of 11 percent, and Facebook paid a tax rate of 5 percent.
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Previously on The Billfold
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It’s fine for companies to pay little or no tax provided that their rich CEOs are taxed heavily. This also has the added incentive of encouraging the company to spend its money creating value for shareholders and providing better products/services for its customers, rather than giving money to its top executives to buy yachts and hire publicists for their cats.
@stuffisthings Pretty sure they’re not though!
@stuffisthings Wait, what? How do you figure? Did the company use our roads? Does the company have indoor plumbing? Does the company benefit from police, firefighters, and every single bit of infrastructure available?
@Megano! They aren’t. I’m saying, better to direct our ire at rich people than at corporations, which at least create jobs and useful things sometimes.
This goes along with the whole 6 policies economists love that are political poison thing, though. Sigh. Though I do think a bipartisan proposal to eliminate the corporate income tax and replace it with a corresponding tax on high earners could be politically viable. For instance, talking of job creators, 92% of employed people in the private sector in the United States work for corporations of one form or another.
@Jake Reinhardt I see what you’re saying, though the examples are not great (roads are paid for at the federal level out of a trust fund financed by fuel surtaxes, and through state and local taxes, which are primarily sales and property taxes; firefighters and police are likewise paid for by property and sometimes sales taxes, which companies pay; and indoor plumbing is installed by the builder and provided with water/sewerage on a cost basis by either a private utility company or a state-owned monopoly). Taxing corporate incomes just encourages company to spend lots of time and energy moving money around to no purpose — how much do you think Wal-Mart, Apple, and Facebook spend on tax attorneys and accountants? How much money do they have stashed overseas, doing nothing? Almost all wealthy people derive their wealth from corporations, either because they own shares in them or because they receive a salary from them (often both). So wherever those profits end up, they will be taxed. Taxing the salaries and capital gains of the super-wealthy makes this system much more transparent and progressive. It is also generally much harder for individuals to shift money around in ways that reduce tax liability — not impossible, but harder than it is for companies (the $1 million a year CEO will spend comparatively less circumventing the law than the $2 billion a year company that pays his salary, for example).
ETA: To be clear, I support eliminating the corporate income tax IF AND ONLY IF it is accompanied by an even larger tax increase on wealthy individuals, including a tax on capital gains equal to the top income tax rate.
@stuffisthings You know that under the law, corporations ARE people, and have the same rights. While I disagree wholeheartedly about that, shouldn’t they also have the same responsibilities?
@Jake Reinhardt @Jake Reinhardt NPR’s Planet Money did a podcast in the last month detailing what stuffisthings is talking about. I pay attention to this stuff, and was surprised by how much I learned. It’s ep #387 here: http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510289
@Jake Reinhardt Citizen’s United notwithstanding, a corporation as a legal person does NOT have the same rights as a citizen. I could just as well argue that corporations are oppressed because they can’t get married or serve in the armed forces. If we’re going to say they have the same responsibilities as human citizens, shouldn’t they also have to serve on juries? The federal government is a legal person, but cannot be sued. A PAC is a legal person, but it cannot vote. That argument is just glib.
The point is: we need taxes to pay for the operations of the government. We should design those taxes so that they do minimal harm to the well-being of all citizens. All I’m saying is that, all else being equal, the other 310,999,999 people who live in this country are better off if Apple Inc. has an extra $100 million than if Apple CEO Tim Cook has an extra $100 million.
(I guess this comment thread is a really good proof of exactly what they’re saying in that podcast, though. Sigh.)
@Jake Reinhardt Yes, the companies used the roads and they hopefully have plumbing. BUT, they also create JOBS, paid wages, and contributed to GDP, something that you, me and other people probably didn’t do as much.
Also, I don’t know how this works in the US, but in here it’s a fine line how much large corporations can be taxed. They have to be taxed enough that the public won’t be outraged and that the government gets its fair share, but not so much that the companies will move somewhere else (case: Nokia).