Corporate Deadbeats

Pepco Holdings...............$1,263,000,000 (-39.5%) 

General Electric...............$19,616,000,000 (-18.9%) 

Paccar...............$955,000,000 (-13.0%) 

PG&E Corp................$6,001,000,000 (-18.4%) 

NiSource...............$1,853,000,000 (-13.0%) 

CenterPoint Energy...............$3,081,000,000 (-11.3%) 

Tenet Healthcare...............$582,000,000 (-8.2%) 

Atmos Energy...............$1,203,000,000 (-9.6%) 

Integrys Energy Group...............$1,178,000,000 (-11.6%) 

American Electric Power...............$8,229,000,000 (-6.4%) 

Con-way...............$422,000,000 (-5.4%)
Ryder System...............$843,000,000 (-5.4%)
Baxter International...............$1,297,000,000 (-0.6%)

Wisconsin Energy...............$2,442,000,000 (-13.2%)
Duke Energy...............$7,234,000,000 (-3.5%)
DuPont...............$2,995,000,000 (10.9%)
Consolidated Edison...............$5,869,000,000 (-1.3%)
Verizon Communications...............$19,783,000,000 (-3.8%)

 Interpublic Group...............$989,000,000 (-2.5%) 

CMS Energy...............$1,872,000,000 (-1.4%) 

NextEra Energy...............$8,844,000,000 (-2.0%) 

Navistar International...............$1,144,000,000 (-1.3%)

Boeing...............$14,847,000,000 (-5.5%) 

Wells Fargo...............$69,158,000,000 (3.8%)

 El Paso...............$4,649,000,000 (-0.9%) 

Mattel...............$1,492,000,000 (-0.9%) 

Honeywell International...............$5,215,000,000 (2.0%) 

DTE Energy...............$3,456,000,000 (0.2%) 

Apache...............$5,989,000,000 (-0.3%) 

Corning...............$2,943,000,000 (-0.2%)

The companies listed above are the companies that were exposed last year as paying no income taxes for 2008, 2009, and 2010. In fact, most of those companies not only didn't pay any taxes, but got money from the government thanks to unneeded subsidies. The Citizens for Tax Justice decided to take another look and see if anything had changed for these companies when the year 2011 is figured in. 

The figures above are for the years 2008 through 2011. The first figure is the amount of profit the company made (and note they all did very well, making hundreds of millions to billions of dollars). The figure in parentheses is the percentage of taxes paid -- with a negative percentage meaning the company got money from the government instead of paying taxes (and these companies are in red). 

Only four of these companies paid any taxes for the four year period -- DTE Energy (0.2%), Honeywell International (2.0%), Wells Fargo (3.8%), and DuPont (10.9%). And the rates they paid are far, far below the tax rate paid by a middle class taxpayer in the United States. I can't imagine that any reasonable person could think that was fair. Even right-wing icon Ronald Reagan didn't believe such a situation was fair. He said the rich (and corporations) should not pay a smaller tax percentage than a "bus driver".

This is a major reason why the deficits keep growing -- because corporate tax revenues have fallen so far from what they used to be. If these companies had paid their fair share of taxes from 2008 through 2011, the government would have collected an additional $78.3 billion.

We have let the Republican Party, through their ridiculous "trickle-down" economic policy, give far too much away to the corporations. There is no reason why companies making huge profits should not pay their fair share of taxes. It's time to remedy this situation.