Pepco Holdings, a Washington, D.C.-area power company, had the lowest effective tax rate, at negative 57.6 percent, among the 280 Fortune 500 companies studied.
General Electric Co, Paccar Inc., PG&E Corp, Computer Sciences Corp and NiSource Inc. as among the 30 that paid no taxes. All 280 corporations examined were profitable over the period.
[Tax] breaks cost the government about $102 billion in lost revenues in 2011, a year when the federal deficit was an estimated $1.3 trillion.
Power group Duke Energy Corp was one of the 30 companies listed as paying no income taxes in 2008-2010.
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.
The government would have a surplus -- roads, dams, hospitals and schools would not be in disrepair or overcrowded because the government would have plenty of money for all these things as they once did and would not be looking for ways to cut social security or other social programs.
You and I, however, CANNOT compete with the money corporations spend to buy off congress, (i.e. our politicians) and voting only replaces one corrupt party with the other corrupt party.
This very problem was foreseen by our founding fathers and our very Constitution with its Bill of Rights gives us the legal right to remove our government by force.
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