Isnt this a repeat?

"the statutory corporate income tax is 35 percent"

So is this considered rape?

Wait... does a negative tax rate mean that the government paid them money? I mean, it's bad enough that these companies find ways to avoid paying taxes. But let's at least draw the line at giving them more money.

Honest Bender: Wait... does a negative tax rate mean that the government paid them money? It means they received that much more in refunds/subsidies than they paid in taxes

OWS doesn't seem so silly now, does it?

Honest Bender: Wait... does a negative tax rate mean that the government paid them money? I mean, it's bad enough that these companies find ways to avoid paying taxes. But let's at least draw the line at giving them more money.

So that they can create jobs, spluh!

BurnShrike: OWS doesn't seem so silly now, does it?

I was going to comment on this. Silly me for stopping to RTFA first.

Honest Bender: Wait... does a negative tax rate mean that the government paid them money? I mean, it's bad enough that these companies find ways to avoid paying taxes. But let's at least draw the line at giving them more money.

I'd wager they could announce they're not paying corporations back if their income tax is negative without too much public outcry. I'd like to see the size of the balls of the CEO that decides to allow his corporation to sue the government for what is essentially an accounting-trick generated handout.

I'd wager there'd be some derpin' about it, but, that seems even a bit of a stretch, after all, they hate the fact that the po' folk get money back too, so....

/who am I kidding, they'd totally start screaming against Fartbongo on that one

Honest Bender: Wait... does a negative tax rate mean that the government paid them money? I mean, it's bad enough that these companies find ways to avoid paying taxes. But let's at least draw the line at giving them more money.

Yet you Farkers totally support this if it is an individual. Makes no sense at all. At least a corporation produces jobs and taxes via those jobs.

gopher321: Hey, give them a break. How can they expect to keep their insane profit margins if they're constantly paying these things called "taxes" all the time?

Sheesh.

That, and having to actually "fix" the electricity when it goes out. The WTOP has a hard-on for The Pepco and I suspect many folks who work the WTOP live in the Pepco service area. They've made it their mission to out the Pepco every time some non-event cuts the juice. The same storm will hit Northern Virgina and Maryland; Dominion Power has service restored within hours. Pepco can take a week. Savory tales of people with live power lines down in their yards and The Pepco saying it's not their problem since it's on the subscriber's property.

They should all be beaten with hoses and run down this her car.

D_Evans45: Isnt this a repeat?

It is. But the original (which had more info) never made it to the front page.
http://www.fark.com/comments/6701051/Heres-proof-that-politicians-who - say-corporations-pay-highest-amount-of-taxes-are-in-fact-lying

Honest Bender: Wait... does a negative tax rate mean that the government paid them money? I mean, it's bad enough that these companies find ways to avoid paying taxes. But let's at least draw the line at giving them more money.

Does a negative 57.6% mean the government paid them a sum equivalent to 57.6% of their income? If that's true, I should be hanging out in Zuccotti Park.

/My payoll tax (fed only) is just over 22%.

I bet they create lots and lots of jobs.

We should probably be paying them for their creationivity.


oh, wait. We are.

According to their annual report, summary here, it looks like they are deferring their income taxes until later. Probably because they were hit with an unexpected $233M some time in the year, and didn't want to fall below their cash reserve requirements. Their net tax payment for the year was $-11M... which changes their tax rate considerably. Maybe the report is only looking at the -$320M "current" tax line?

/not saying it's right that companies do this, but this report is kind of misleading. PEPCO is going to have to pay $334 million more in taxes at some point

D_Evans45: Isnt this a repeat?

Yes, they get away with not paying their taxes every year.

Well, you guys know how well it all worked out for Greece. That whole non-tax-paying thingee.

This must mean that they're making tons of jobs, right?

RIGHT?

AngryJailhouseFistfark: That, and having to actually "fix" the electricity when it goes out. The WTOP has a hard-on for The Pepco and I suspect many folks who work the WTOP live in the Pepco service area. They've made it their mission to out the Pepco every time some non-event cuts the juice. The same storm will hit Northern Virgina and Maryland; Dominion Power has service restored within hours. Pepco can take a week. Savory tales of people with live power lines down in their yards and The Pepco saying it's not their problem since it's on the subscriber's property.

Boom.

As a NoVAn who has had Dominion power since 2002 when I lived on my own for the first time I thank my lucky stars that I'm not a Pepco customer. I walked past their DC offices last year a couple of weeks after the Snowpocolypse and saw that their building was actually egged. I bet if a cop witnessed the incident he would've just shrugged his shoulders and gone "meh..."

It isn't stupid to PEPCO, subby. Look folks, the average US company pays a mere average of 18% tax. Rather, I should say that we pay it for them, as they adjust their prices to cover this. The only reason that the average rate is so high is that smaller companies pay a much higher rate than the big ones. I don't know what the current figure was, but about 10 years ago, the average Fortune 500 company paid only about 11% tax, with several paying none at all. At that time, the average American was paying about 14%.

Add to this the huge loophole of the S corporations (aka LLCs). These companies do not pay tax any tax. Rather, they pass through their profits to shareholders, who pay tax at the personal rate. Sounds good on paper, but in reality, there are so many accounting tricks these companies can use that it looks as if they pass little to nothing to the shareholders. It has been estimated that since the advent of the LLC federal corporate tax revenues have fallen by 60%. Who has picked up the slack? Why the middle class, of course.

Honest Bender: Wait... does a negative tax rate mean that the government paid them money? I mean, it's bad enough that these companies find ways to avoid paying taxes. But let's at least draw the line at giving them more money.


Sometimes it does:

Seventy-eight of the 280 companies paid zero or less in federal income taxes in at least one year from 2008 to 2010. Twenty-five of these companies enjoyed multiple no-tax years, bringing the total number of no-tax years to 108. In the years they paid no income tax, these companies earned $156 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But instead of paying $55 billion in income taxes as the 35 percent corporate tax rate seems to require, these companies generated so many excess tax breaks that they reported negative taxes (often receiving outright tax rebate checks from the U.S. Treasury), totaling $21.8 billion. These companies' "negative tax rates" mean that they made more after taxes than before taxes in those no-tax years.

And the reward for the most non-taxpayingest corporation in the country goes to...PEPCO, who enjoyed a -57.6 percent tax rate from 2008 to 2010. Better luck next time, Boeing

Let's not forget that other aviation plant opening up in the right-to-work state of Alabama!

We need to send the NLRB after this company with full force! Show them that aviation plants must be unionized and can't be protected by hiding in right-to-work states!

Show them as little mercy as you showed Boeing! What's that? It's being built by Jeffrey Immelt's GE? Oh, suddenly there's not a peep out of the NLRB...

hp6sa: According to their annual report, summary here, it looks like they are deferring their income taxes until later. Probably because they were hit with an unexpected $233M some time in the year, and didn't want to fall below their cash reserve requirements. Their net tax payment for the year was $-11M... which changes their tax rate considerably. Maybe the report is only looking at the -$320M "current" tax line?

/not saying it's right that companies do this, but this report is kind of misleading. PEPCO is going to have to pay $334 million more in taxes at some point

Maybe .... or maybe they'll go bankrupt and be "too essential to fail" and get a bailout

Unless the company is breaking the tax laws, you should be blaming and/or protesting the government!!! Stop scapegoating the problem.

JackieRabbit: It isn't stupid to PEPCO, subby. Look folks, the average US company pays a mere average of 18% tax. Rather, I should say that we pay it for them, as they adjust their prices to cover this. The only reason that the average rate is so high is that smaller companies pay a much higher rate than the big ones. I don't know what the current figure was, but about 10 years ago, the average Fortune 500 company paid only about 11% tax, with several paying none at all. At that time, the average American was paying about 14%.

Add to this the huge loophole of the S corporations (aka LLCs). These companies do not pay tax any tax. Rather, they pass through their profits to shareholders, who pay tax at the personal rate. Sounds good on paper, but in reality, there are so many accounting tricks these companies can use that it looks as if they pass little to nothing to the shareholders. It has been estimated that since the advent of the LLC federal corporate tax revenues have fallen by 60%. Who has picked up the slack? Why the middle class, of course.

One point of order. LLC s are NOT S-Corps.

Plus, a citation is needed for your federal revenue dropoff number. Be sure to calculate how much was paid by the individuals.

pag1107: Be nice if they could use some of that to actually keep the power on. Seems like there's an outage every time somebody sneezes.

this

Honest Bender: Wait... does a negative tax rate mean that the government paid them money? I mean, it's bad enough that these companies find ways to avoid paying taxes. But let's at least draw the line at giving them more money.

Yes, the government is corrupt. As I understand from the Democrats and the #OWS, the key to reducing this corruption is to make the government larger, give them more of your money, and increase their power.

Minimally Hairy Beer-Powered Simian: D_Evans45: Isnt this a repeat?

Yes, they get away with not paying their taxes every year.

I'm wiping coffee off of my desk now, thanks. :D

Funny how my company with all of 2 employees has to pay the standard tax rate every year.

Holy crap, they must have created TONS of jobs with a tax rate like that! Lets give them another tax cut and see how many more jobs they can create!

Seriously though, I actually would support a lowering of the base tax rate for corporations, as long as we eliminated all of the crazy loopholes that the big boys exploit to avoid paying taxes at all. I don't think that it is fair that Mom and Pop Corp. have to pay a third of their comparatively tiny profits in taxes, while companies like GE can make an insane profit, hire an army of tax lawyers and accountants, and end up with a negative tax liability. Like everything else these days, the corporate tax structure is set up to fleece the little guy while lining the pockets of the wealthy. If we truly want more decent quality jobs in this country, we need to focus on making things easier for small businesses and startups Cutting individual tax rates does not create jobs, it just creates more wealth for individuals. Start making the big boys actually pay their taxes and give the little guys a break, and you may actually see some job creation happen. Of course, we can't allow that to happen, because one of those little guys may grow to compete against the big boys someday, and in true free market capitalism the government is always required to make things as anti-competitive as possible to allow the "true" capitalists to thrive in a protected market.

I'm wondering how long they think they can continue doing this. They don't pay, nation goes bankrupt, great depression, no customers, no profit. I mean..... It's really counter productive to any long term business gains.

lucksi: Funny how my company with all of 2 employees has to pay the standard tax rate every year.

You are doing it very very wrong. With only two employees, you should be organized in such a fashion as to not be subject to tax at the entity level.

As mentioned above, Pepco needs that money to repair all lines that get downed each time there is a moderately-sized storm because they refuse to spend money trimming around the lines beforehand.

I never thought I'd be happy to be served by a monopoly, but being Dominion Virginia Power customer seems pretty nice after each thunderstorm/accumulation of 0.10 inches of ice/snowfall.

Just off the top of my head, I can think of at least a dozen reasons why a companies tax liabilities could be so low.

TFA: utility company

And, I think I just found the reason.
Something tells me the Citizens for Tax Justice aren't the most sophisticated auditors on the planet.

hp6sa: According to their annual report, summary here, it looks like they are deferring their income taxes until later. Probably because they were hit with an unexpected $233M some time in the year, and didn't want to fall below their cash reserve requirements. Their net tax payment for the year was $-11M... which changes their tax rate considerably. Maybe the report is only looking at the -$320M "current" tax line?

/not saying it's right that companies do this, but this report is kind of misleading. PEPCO is going to have to pay $334 million more in taxes at some point

So next year, they can dump an underperforming stock, count the losses against deferred tax payments, and FURTHER reduce their tax liability.

Hey, assholes (and I'm speaking directly to PEPCO REGION PRESIDENT TOM GRAHAM): If you're not going to pay taxes (to the tune of getting a refund over half your operating income), at least be a rock-solid power-provider.

Trees have been around long before power lines. So has wind. So has lightning. So have tornadoes. Blaming these for outages only illustrates why we should never have allowed you to dominate the market in the first place. You apparently get surprised when air friction, gravity and water (frozen or not) interrupt the circuit and stop the flow of electrons - for which we pay handsomely every month, guaranteed (seriously - PEPCO is under no obligation to lower your bill in the event of an outage); just as surprised this year as you were last year.

And then have the nerve to ask for huge rate increases (to defray the cost of these upgrades, natch - never mind that these are things that should have been done sometime in 1985, when they invented wind storms). Bite my bag, PEPCO. If I could get SMECO up in Silver Spring, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Companies do not write tax laws, Congress does. Put the blame where it belongs

elffster: Pep Streebeck?

Damn P.A.G.A.N.s!

Corporations don't pay taxes, their consumers do in the form of increased prices. And they people who pay the biggest percentage of their income to corporate taxes are the poor. Why do you all hate the poor so much?

every single entity that exists and generates income in the united states needs to be paying taxes. Insult to injury is added when entities that dont pay takes get much more from the government than is put in.

AngryJailhouseFistfark: That, and having to actually "fix" the electricity when it goes out. The WTOP has a hard-on for The Pepco and I suspect many folks who work the WTOP live in the Pepco service area. They've made it their mission to out the Pepco every time some non-event cuts the juice. The same storm will hit Northern Virgina and Maryland; Dominion Power has service restored within hours. The Pepco can take a week. Savory tales of people with live power lines down in their yards and The Pepco saying it's not their problem since it's on the subscriber's property.

They should all be beaten with hoses and run down this her car.

FTFY - The boyvoyeur is your grammar friend

earthworm2.0: I'm wondering how long they think they can continue doing this. They don't pay, nation goes bankrupt, great depression, no customers, no profit. I mean..... It's really counter productive to any long term business gains.

They all plan to cash out long before then. Hell, most of them have already cashed out, and are resting safely on private islands.

DrewMoore: Companies do not write tax laws, Congress does. Put the blame where it belongs

Lobbyists

Inyego: Unless the company is breaking the tax laws, you should be blaming and/or protesting the government!!! Stop scapegoating the problem.

Why not both? They are increasingly populated by the same pool of connected individuals, to the exclusion of everyone else. Power-seeking individuals and collective entities will use any available means to increase and consolidate their influence over everyone else. The US and China look increasingly similar, structurally.

*props up a black flag*

Lost Thought 00: DrewMoore: Companies do not write tax laws, Congress does. Put the blame where it belongs

Lobbyists

Lobbyists paid by corporations.

Wellon Dowd: Lost Thought 00: DrewMoore: Companies do not write tax laws, Congress does. Put the blame where it belongs

Lobbyists

Lobbyists paid by corporations.

Banker lobbyists paid by 1% of corporations.

Inyego: Unless the company is breaking the tax laws, you should be blaming and/or protesting the government!!! Stop scapegoating the problem.


Yes, and no. In the final analysis I'd say mostly no.

Yes, the government does make the laws, and yes they are doing a terrible terrible job of balancing the public and corporate interests for the last few decades... but the reason they're doing such a bad job is the oodles of cash our political class depends on for their careers from these same companies. It is deeply corrosive to responsible governance.

And on top of that, some do pay their fair share, or something close to it. The sad part is, that actually puts them at a competitive disadvantage, so we've strongly incentivized this garbage:

DuPont and Monsanto both produce chemicals. But over the 2008-10 period, Monsanto paid 22 percent of its profits in U.S. corporate income taxes, while DuPont actually paid a negative tax rate of -3.4 percent.

# Department store chain Macy's paid a three-year rate of 12.1 percent, while competing chain Nordstrom's paid 37.1 percent.

# In computer technology, Hewlett-Packard paid 3.7 of its three-year U.S. profits in federal income taxes, while Texas Instruments paid 33.5 percent.

# FedEx paid 0.9 percent over three years, while its competitor United Parcel Service paid 24.1 percent.