What a bunch of sensationalistic crap. Tons of companies exist solely for organizational (as in, keeping things neat and orderly) purposes, and as pass-through entities into other companies. There's nothing shady or tax-evasive about this; it's just something you do.

If this were a statistic about the 1000 largest companies in America, it'd be alarming; when we are talking about all entities that are formed as corporations, it is completely meaningless. Interesting how a harmless GAO statistic can be spun in such a manner.

The irony is they start the article saying...

"Here are the rest of us, from the the family of four having trouble paying for college education to your neighbor just trying to make ends meet, who have to pick up the slack."

I took the one viable example and tested it (The other example, someone who is barely making ends meet, is either spending more than they can afford or is not paying Federal Income Taxes) A familly with 4 dependents making the average salary ($60,0000 each) is only paying 6% of their income in taxes according to H&R Block. While Corporations and their over paid CEOs generally pay close to half their income (provided they aren't cheating)

I'm not saying some rich people and corporations don't cheat. They do and I hope they get caught. But lets not forget the reality which is the high income brackets subsidize the lower ones. Not the other way around.

A corporate tax is a double tax, as any dividends or payroll are also taxed, sometimes twice.

Any profits should be filed as income by shareholder, making the tax system much simpler. If that income were taxed at a flat rate, we could remove huge chunks of the tax code.

Simplification is the best way to avoid evasion.

This one statistic, taken out of context is kind of meaningless. Do the remaining 34% pay outsize amounts? It is the same thing with personal taxation, the top 10% accounts for over 70% of the tax base. To make a fair judgment you need to consider more information. Are the 66% of companies not paying taxes the LLC's and S-Corps used by most small business people? Are they not paying taxes because they face losses their first years in operations, or are only marginally profitable?

The thing that always concerns me is that the USA is the second most expensive place to do business in the world, just behind Japan.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/printer/22501.html

It is a complex issue and deserves a full account.

Yeah, let's increase taxes on corporations. I'm sure that the costs won't get passed on to employees. Plus, the government is so much better at spending money than corporations that actually produce something.

The 11 people that upvoted this article should be ashamed.

In that time period, an annual average of 1.3 million U.S. companies and 39,000 foreign companies doing business in the United States paid no income taxes - despite having a combined $2.5 trillion in revenue.

I'm no financial genius, but I'd guess the key word here is "revenue", which is not the same as "profit". It's possible that most of these companies have no net income, hence no income tax.

Note 'some of them report $0 income before deducting their expenses, and others find deductions equaling more than their reported income.' That's another way of saying they're making a loss. See? They're not paying taxes because they're losing money.

It's actually worse than that.

No corporation pays taxes of any form because they all get the money from customers, owners, and employees (via higher prices and lower payments).

Corporations just collect taxes.

This is politics - flagged.

"socialism", US-style ;-)