Finley @ ESPN: Good times are over

[GenuineRisk]

Originally Posted by freddymo

Don't all business's pay substantial tax on profits?

No. While officially the US has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world (35%) in practice there are so many loopholes and politicians willing to be bought off that many of our large corporations pay very little tax. GE, for example, paid 3.6% in taxes:

http://www.minyanville.com/dailyfeed...ing-corporate/

Companies like Wal Mart pay more in federal tax than GE, as they have a much smaller overseas presence, but they have some effective strategies for reducing what they owe in state tax. Corporate taxes levied by the states average about 7 percent, and Wal Mart pays, on average, about half of that.

http://www.uic.edu/classes/actg/actg...ate%20Taxes%20[Q].htm

I'm not trying to open up an argument on the US corporate tax rate; I just get really irritated when the mainstream media yammers about the highest corporate tax rate in the world without also yammering about what is the effective rate corporations actually pay. As always, theory is very different from practice.