Defense Contractors Pay Little To No Corporate Income Tax While Earning Billions

According to the "logic" of those opposed to the inheritance tax, since they are paid with tax money, the money has already been taxed, so they shouldn't be taxed again, right?

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/07/362646/defense-industry-tax-no/

By Pat Garofalo on Nov 7, 2011 at 11:50 am

Last week, Citizens for Tax Justice released a report showing that 30 major corporations have paid no income taxes for the last three years, as they made $160 billion. CTJ looked at 280 companies in the Fortune 500, and found that “while the federal corporate tax code ostensibly requires big corporations to pay a 35 percent corporate income tax rate, on average, the 280 corporations in our study paid only about half that amount.”

In fact, over the last three years, only two industries — retail and health care — paid an effective tax rate of 30 percent or more. And as the Hill noted today, one industry is doing very well when it comes to tax avoidance — defense contractors:

American defense manufacturers pay an average annual tax rate of 17.5 percent, placing them in a class with some of the nation’s least-taxed sectors like information technology, telecommunications, financial services and energy, Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy concluded. [...]

Boeing, which also makes commercial aircraft, came in with the lowest tax rate among defense firms at -1.8 percent; SAIC had the highest at 28.7 percent, according to the report.

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