Not just Amazon: 60 big companies paid $0 in taxes under Trump law

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/companies-paying-zero-taxes-trump-law-155944124.html

Kristin Myers
Yahoo FinanceApril 12, 2019

Big businesses are faring better than ever under the Trump era tax law, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).

According to analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), 60 Fortune 500 companies avoided paying all federal income tax in 2018 (with their total average effective tax rate being roughly -5%).

That’s more than three times the number of companies that avoided paying corporate taxes on average from 2008 to 2015. During that period, 18 companies managed to pay 0% or less (with their total average effective tax rate over 8 years being roughly -4%).

“There are a lot of breaks and loopholes that allow a company not to pay,” Steve Wamhoff, ITEP’s Director of Federal Tax Policy, told Yahoo Finance. “People, when they think of tax reform, think the government is going to fix the tax code and get rid of breaks and loopholes and get rid tax dodging. What we got at the end of 2017 was not that. It was the opposite of that. The Tax Cuts and jobs act left a lot of special breaks and loopholes in place and created some new ones.”

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Of all 60 companies paying taxes for 2018, the first full year under the TCJA, Amazon (AMZN) topped the list with the largest portion of income. In 2018, Amazon paid $0 in taxes on record profit of $11 billion. 2018 was the second year in a row that the e-commerce giant was able to avoid paying taxes.

Amazon is joined on the list by other big companies raking in big profits, including Delta Airlines (DAL), Chevron (CVX), Netflix (NFLX), and General Motors (GM).

“Instead of paying $16.4 billion in taxes at the 21 percent statutory corporate tax rate,” ITEP noted, “these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion.”

Under TCJA, Trump’s new tax law cuts the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. And some big businesses that did end up paying tax in 2018 paid far less than that.

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