A couple of reports document what my dad always knew: the most wealthy and powerful corporations and individuals still get rich off all the rest of us. Robert Reich sums it up on BlueSky:
5 years of exec pay:
Tesla: $2.5 billion
T-Mobile: $675 million
Netflix: $652 million
Ford: $355 million
5 years of federal income taxes paid:
Tesla: $0 ($1M refund)
T-Mobile: $0 ($80M refund)
Netflix: $236 million
Ford: $121 million
Anyone else see the problem here?
Reich’s quick summary comes from “More for Them, Less for Us: Corporations That Pay Their Executives More Than Uncle Sam,” a detailed study published in March 2024 by the Institute for Policy Studies. In the bullet-pointed summary of its findings:
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- 35 major U.S. corporations — including famous names like Ford, Netflix and Tesla — paid less in federal income taxes between 2018 and 2022 than they paid their top five executives. All 35 were cumulatively profitable over that five-year span.
- Among these 35 corporations, the total compensation reported for named executive officers over this five-year period was $9.5 billion. Their combined federal income tax bills came to a negative $1.8 billion — that is, rather than paying taxes, they received refunds.
- An additional 29 profitable corporations paid their top executives more than they paid in federal income taxes in at least two of the five years of the study period.
- 18 corporations in the study — despite reporting net profits over the five-year span — paid $0 in federal income taxes. Actually, except in one case, all paid less than zero because they got refunds. These 18 corporations that paid $0 in federal income taxes found the resources to lavish their executives with a cumulative $5.3 billion in pay packages.
- The 64 firms in the study posted cumulative pre-tax domestic profits of $657 billion between 2018 to 2022, yet paid an average effective federal tax rate of just 2.8% (the statutory rate is 21%) while paying their executives over $15 billion.
Mary Turck