I Paid More Taxes Than Exxon, Boeing, B of A Combined

Lots of data has come out recently about how little America's top corporations are paying in taxes, both federal and state, and that's despite earning huge profits. So where is the outcry from teabaggers? Where are the demands about "paying your fair share"?

What makes this especially contemptible is that corporate America has managed to get Republicans to yelp about our high corporate tax rate, as if any corporation actually paid anything close to the nominal rate. How many times have we seen Republicans and other intellectual prostitutes stand before a camera and say we can create jobs and get the economy going if we would just lower corporate taxes? This does not even include the numerous corporations that not only do not pay taxes, but get $ millions or even $ billions back from the feds.

Senator Bernie Sanders has released a list of corporate giants that pay dramatically lower taxes than their profits would suggest. The list, shown below, is available from various websites. I got it from here. 

1)      Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009.  Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.
2)      Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.
3)      Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
4)      Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.
5)      Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.
6)      Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.
7)      Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.
8)      Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.
9)      ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
10)  Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.

The video below is a compilation of taxpayers wanting to know why they pay their share, and many corporations don't. Some nice suggestions about how we can share the video and make people more aware of what this country has become. If enough people can make these points, maybe we will hear less of this obscene shit about how teachers need to take a pay cut to balance the budget.

Because, sweetheart, if we don't push back, it will only get worse.