A group of congressional Democrats and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday highlighted dozens of profitable U.S. corporations that have paid their executives more than they’ve paid in federal income taxes in recent years, a problem that the lawmakers attributed in large part to former President Donald Trump’s massive tax-cut package that Republicans are working to extend.
“In the first five years following the 2017 giveaway, 35 companies raked in $277 billion in domestic profits and paid their executives $9.5 billion — more than they paid in federal income taxes,” the lawmakers noted in letters to each of the companies, pointing to recent research by the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness.
“Next year, Congress will decide what to do with these corporate giveaways. Republicans have promised to go even further if elected and cut the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 15%,” the lawmakers continued. “This additional tax giveaway would provide Fortune 100 corporations as a whole with another $50 billion each year, more than all current K-12 federal education spending.”
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) in the Senate and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) in the House led the letters to the 35 companies, a list that includes high-profile names such as Netflix, Ford, and Tesla, whose CEO is the richest man in the world.
“Tesla is among the most dramatic examples of this phenomenon — big, profitable corporations that have actually been paying their top executives more than they pay the government in federal income taxes,” the lawmakers wrote. “According to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness, in the period between 2018 and 2022, Tesla raked in $4.4 billion in profits and did not pay a single dollar in federal income tax.”
During that same period, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk received “the largest pay package ever recorded for a company’s CEO,” the lawmakers observed.
The other companies that have paid their top executives more than they’ve paid in federal taxes in recent years are T-Mobile, AIG, NextEra, Darden, MetLife, Duke Energy, First Energy, DISH, Principal Financial, American Electrical Power, Kinder Morgan, Dominion, Oneok, Williams, Xcel Energy, NRG Energy, Salesforce, DTE Energy, Ameren, Sempra Energy, U.S. Steel, Entergy, AmerisourceBergen, PPL, CMS Energy, Evergy, Voya Financial, Atmos Energy, Alliant Energy, Match Group, UGI, and Agilent Tech.
The lawmakers demanded that the companies’ CEOs answer several questions, including how much the corporations would have paid in federal taxes had the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) not been enacted and how much they’ve spent on lobbying to keep the Republican law intact.
“The windfall from TCJA to big businesses, executives, and wealthy shareholders is unmistakable,” the letters read. “A recent analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that 342 companies paid an average effective income tax rate of just 14.1% during the five years after TCJA passed, almost a third less than the 21% statutory rate. The gains do not ‘trickle down’ — 90% of workers saw no earnings increase, while executives making $989,000 per year or more got an average raise of $50,000.”
The letters were released days after the Economic Policy Institutereleased an analysis showing that CEO pay has soared by 1,085% since 1978 while the pay of typical U.S. workers has grown by just 24%.
The 2017 Trump-GOP tax law led major companies to splurge on stock buybacks, a major gift to corporate executives whose annual compensation packages consist largely of stock.
“President [Joe] Biden and Democrats in Congress are committed to making corporations pay their fair share,” the lawmakers wrote in their letters. “In the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, we passed the first corporate tax increase in 30 years with the 15% corporate minimum tax. Though significant, raising $222 billion from billion-dollar corporations, it is not enough on its own to undo the corporate tax giveaways signed into law by President Trump and ensure that corporations pay their fair share.”
“Next year,” they added, “Congress has an opportunity to take bigger strides in reforming our tax code — to raise the corporate rate, close loopholes, and hold big businesses to the same standards as everyday working Americans who pay their fair share.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy