Amy Hanauer Common Dreams
President Trump and his allies in Congress, across two presidential terms, have broken the federal corporate income tax.
They reduced the statutory tax rate to its lowest level since 1939 and lavishly exempted an enormous share of corporate income from taxation. The results?
Last year, the largest profitable corporations in the country paid the smallest share of their profits in federal income taxes since the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the organization I head, began analyzing this over 40 years ago. Extraordinarily profitable companies paid very little and, shockingly, 114 corporations paid nothing at all.
It is likely that most of these corporate CEOs didn’t break any laws. They don’t have to. Their profligate campaign spending elects candidates who are beholden to them.
Who bears the cost of corporations paying such a pittance? The American people.
Our findings should alarm anyone who thinks enormous companies ought to contribute to the government of the country that enables them to profit so much. The report takes the Fortune 1000 and S&P 500 lists of the largest U.S. corporations and examines the 706 of them that reported profits and disclosed enough information to allow analysis of their 2025 federal income tax.
What stands out is not only the number of huge entities paying little or nothing, but the household names.
American Airlines, 3M, Citigroup, CVS, Doordash, Duke Energy, GoDaddy, H&R Block, Hasbro, Honeywell, Live Nation, Palantir, Southwest Airlines, Tesla, United Airlines, and Walt Disney are just some of the 114 companies that paid no federal income tax in 2025.
It wasn’t because they had a bad year. Tesla paid no tax on profits of $5.7 billion, giving Elon Musk his money’s worth from hundreds of millions in political spending. Citigroup paid no tax on profits of $4.4 billion. CVS paid nothing on $8 billion. It’s a nice deal if you can get it.
Along with no-tax corporations, there are plenty of low-tax ones: On top of the 114 zero tax companies, 144 more paid less than 7 percent on their income. Their average rate was 3.1 percent.
This list includes Amazon, AT&T, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, ExxonMobil, J.P. Morgan-Chase, Johnson & Johnson, Meta, Microsoft, News Corp., Uber, and many more. Again… profitable companies all.
On average, the 706 corporations in the ITEP report paid 10.4 percent of their profits in federal corporate income tax in 2025, the lowest level in at least 40 years. One reason is that the legal rate is lower than it’s been in over 80 years, down from 35 percent to 21 percent in President Trump’s first term. On top of that are tax subsidies, the breaks that exempt huge profits so corporations pay even less than 21 percent of their profits in taxes.
Every company in our study was profitable. The 706 corporations reported $1.88 trillion in domestic profits last year. At the pre-Trump rate of 35 percent, they would have paid $658 billion in taxes. Between the reduction in the rate and the subsidies, these corporations saved more than $460 billion.
The corporate tax slashing is happening even as federal spending cuts bludgeon our communities.
It is likely that most of these corporate CEOs didn’t break any laws. They don’t have to. Their profligate campaign spending elects candidates who are beholden to them. Their lobbying dictates what elected officials should do. And they profit from the laws that Congress and the President deliver.
The $460 billion in taxes saved by these 706 corporations could have been used to benefit the American people and tackle some of our biggest policy problems. It could have bought Medicaid coverage for more than 55 million people, Social Security for more than 18 million retired workers, or childcare for more than 34 million children.
The corporate tax slashing is happening even as federal spending cuts bludgeon our communities. While Trump’s 2025 tax law will cut $1 trillion in taxes for the richest 1 percent over the next decade, it will also chop $1 trillion from healthcare, forcing higher health insurance costs for Americans and eliminating insurance entirely for millions. Social Security will be insolvent by 2032 unless Congress allocates more resources. And childcare remains a cost-prohibitive essential for young working families.
Enough is enough. Inequality is soaring, prices are high, and instead of combatting the affordability crisis, this Congress and this president are passing laws that enrich the richest and abandon the rest of us.
Amy Hanauer joined ITEP in 2020, bringing nearly 30 years of experience working to create economic policy that advances social justice. As executive director of both ITEP and Citizens for Tax Justice, Amy provides vision and leadership to promote fair and equitable state and national tax policy.
Editor’s Note: At a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes, alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and ScheerPost is one of them. Please support our independent journalism by contributing to our online donation platform, Network for Good, or send a check to our new PO Box. We can’t thank you enough, and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news.
You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.