The budget agreement that President Obama lashed together late last week in the face of a government shutdown will take away billions of dollars in federal funding from vital public services. But while Washington tells needy Americans to tighten their belts, some of the country’s most profitable corporations aren’t paying their fair share of taxes. What’s most galling is the fact that the revenue the government stands to take in from these taxes could go a long way toward filling the gaps the budget compromise will punch in important public programs.
This fact isn’t lost on Senator Bernie Sanders: it is grossly unfair to cut funding for transportation, housing and community development programs, Sanders argues, while corporations not only skirt their tax responsibilities but also get tax refunds from the federal government. Here are seven corporations on Sanders’s list of the worst corporate income tax avoiders.
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According to the company’s shareholder report, Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS.
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Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
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Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.
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Boeing, which received a $35 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.
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Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.
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ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2006 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction from 2007 to 2009.
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Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.
Click here to see a slide show featuring some of the other corporations—from Goldman Sachs to General Motors—that owe the government a lot of money.
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