Many corporations don’t pay taxes

On April 15, the day income tax returns are due, scores of people are scurrying around to get their taxes completed.

But what is the media focusing on?

On Tax Day, the media are making a big deal about people who are against government and taxes. National Public Radio quoted a woman as saying, “The government is sucking the life out of us.”

I heard this “news” over and over and over again today.

However, I didn’t hear much on Tax Day about the fact that many corporations pay very little taxes.

From 1998 to 2005, about two-thirds of corporations operating in the United States didn’t pay taxes annually, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Corporations gave a number of reasons on their returns for not having taxable revenue in 2005, after making $2.5 trillion in sales. Often listed were the cost of producing goods, salary expenses, and interest payments on debt, the report said.

Whether the companies had profits that should have been taxed wasn’t analyzed by the GAO.

A higher percentage of large corporations pay taxes, the GAO reports. About 28 percent of large corporations paid no taxes in 2005. Of the 1.3 million corporations included in the study, 998 were categorized as large.

I’d like to see tax loopholes closed so that American corporations do their share through paying taxes to support the needs of Americans and the country.

Copyright 2009, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist