Profitable corporate tax skinflints

Eighty-eight profitable corporations reported paying no taxes last year, according to a new report from the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a non-profit, non-partisan research firm.

U.S. taxpayers are still feeling trickled-down on.

The 88 includes these companies (and their 2026 profits): Ameren ($1.60 billion), Citigroup ($4.45 billion in profits), CVS Health ($6.57 billion), GoDaddy ($981 million), Live Nation ($98 million), Palantir ($1.58 billion), PayPal ($1.43 billion), Tesla ($5.7 billion– although Tesla paid more than $1 billion in taxes to China and other countries), United Airlines Holdings ($4.29 billion), Walt Disney ($8.3 billion), and Yum Brands, the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, ($1.03 billion).,

U.S. corporations’ statutory tax rate is supposed to be 21%, so together the total $105 billion in profits the 88 corporations reported in 2026 should have contributed $22.1 billion without the carefully crafted breaks they got. Instead, rather than paying that amount, those companies collectively “received $4.7 billion in tax rebates,” ITEP reports.

Historically, corporations paid a greater share of the costs of the federal government. For most of the 1950s, the top statutory tax rate was 52%, and that revenue was almost one-third of all federal receipts. Now, U.S. corporations’ share is about 8.6%.

As recently as 1969, the rate remained at about 62%;  the Reagan administration cut it to 34%, and in Trump’s first term, it was “temporarily” reduced to 21%. However, Trump and the Republican majority in Congress last summer passed H.R. 1 (the GOP dubbed it the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill”), which made that 21% rate permanent AND also kept perks for executive stock options, bonus “depreciations,” and expenses for research & development, and INCREASED tax exemptions for federal gift, estate, and generation-skipping transfers

“This is a policy choice,” writes journalist Judd Legum in his online newsletter Popular Information.

The continuation of the false “trickle-down” theory that enriching the wealthy eventually will help everyone else prioritizes corporations and shareholders over working people and individual taxpayers – who have to shoulder more of the costs of government.

The AFL-CIO last month reminded the nation that President Trump in January promised taxpayers that they’d see tax refunds increase by $1,000 this year.

“That’s not even close to what most of us are actually getting back,” the labor federation said.

Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the disparity worsened by the One Big Beautiful Bill will ultimately give the largest benefits to the richest Americans.

Whatever refunds are coming, they’ll go to higher prices in food, housing, utilities and child care because of inflation, especially at gas pumps (thanks to the war on Iran) and health care (cut by Congress).

“Those big, ugly tax cuts for the rich [are] the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in American history,” the AFL-CIO continued, noting that the Trump administration’s budget proposal released in April “would make even bigger cuts to food, housing, education, heating and workforce development programs.”

Few taxpayers enjoy paying taxes, but Americans are very unhappy now, according to polls.

Fox News reported that 70% of us think taxes are too high (compared to 60% last year), and 64% of us disagree with how Trump is handling taxes – up from 53% a year ago.

Gallup polling from March also found about 6 in 10 U.S. adults say the amount of federal income tax they have to pay is “too high,” and another poll, from Pew, showed that 60% of Americans are bothered “a lot” by corporations and wealthy Americans don’t pay their fair share of taxes.

Made worse, as Sharon Williams reported in last month’s Labor Paper, is the “hidden” burden that taxpayers are forced to cover when many profitable corporations pay wages so low that their workers are eligible for Medicaid and food assistance – which taxpayers underwrite.

Also, last month, economist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich offered an “Your April Fools' Day reminder that trickle-down economics is the greatest trick of all. It's nothing more than a cruel hoax designed to enrich corporations and the super-rich at your expense.

“It does not work.,” he’s said. “This economic approach has been tried ... and the result is that nothing trickles down. Instead, it leads to an incredibly larger federal deficit and debts.”