Many Firms Didn't Pay Taxes

Most Corporations Skipped Payments From '98 to '05, GAO Says

"About two-thirds of corporations operating in the United States did not pay taxes annually from 1998 to 2005, according to a new report scheduled to be made public today from the U.S. Government Accountability Office...."
 ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081102324.html )



and from that GAO Report,
Comparison of the Reported Tax Liabilities of Foreign- and U.S.-Controlled Corporations,
1998-2005

"We reported that from 1989 through 2000 foreign-controlled corporations were more likely to report zero U.S. income tax liability than U.S.-controlled corporations with a majority of both types of corporations reporting no liability.
...
By manipulating transfer prices, multinational companies can shift income from higher to lower tax jurisdictions, reducing the companies’ overall tax liability. As we noted in our previous reports, researchers acknowledge that transfer pricing abuses may explain some of the differences in tax liabilities of foreign-controlled corporations compared to U.S.-controlled corporations...."
( http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08957.pdf )

>>With 2nd highest corporate taxes in the world


another myth.
Nobody pays the full rate. You are not including all the deductions, loopholes & shelters in the tax code.
If you take those into account the US corporate taxes are below the average of other industrialized countries.
(See OECD Revenue stats:  www.oecd.org/ctp/revenuestats )


From those liberal hippies over at Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal:

"At Pfizer, for example, overseas tax deferrals cut the company's effective rate by 20.2 percentage points during 2008, making it the single biggest factor in its effective tax rate of 17%. ...
Hewlett-Packard and Cisco cut their effective tax rates by 16.9 percentage points and 16.1 percentage points respectively during 2008...
The tax treatment of its overseas activity as well as favorable tax treatment of exports lowered GE's tax rate by 26.9 percentage points during 2008, driving the company's effective tax rate down to 5.5%. ..."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124035794000941117.html

That's a pretty good deal.
and, as mentioned above, the majority of corporations don't pay ANY tax.