Tax Cut! Yardeni Research Calculates Effective Corporate Tax Rate Already Fallen To 13%

In March 2017, The Institution on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) released its latest report examining the corporate tax filings for Fortune 500 companies. It looked at 258 of the companies which had been "consistently profitable" from 2008 to 2015. The report concluded that these companies were collectively paying far less than the statutory 35% federal corporate tax rate – in fact the average effective tax rate was 21.2%. According to the ITEP report.

Many profitable corporations are finding ways to zero out their corporate taxes. Of the 258 profitable Fortune 500 companies in our sample:
18 paid ZERO in taxes over the full eight-year period.
100 paid zero—or less—in at least one profitable year during the eight-year period, 58 of those companies had multiple zero-tax years.
24 companies zeroed out their taxes in at least four of the eight years.
48 companies paid a rate between 0 and 10 percent over eight years.

In general, it found that utility, oil, gas and pipeline companies tend to pay low tax rates. Only about a quarter of the companies paid a tax rate of at least 30% and about 60% of those companies were in two sectors, retail and health care.

The report found that the 258 corporations enjoyed tax breaks of $526 billion during the eight years 2008-15. More than half of this total, $286 billion, went to just 25 companies.

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