Trump gave top US firms staggering tax cuts, with some paying $0 or less – report

Some of the US’s most profitable corporations, including General Motors, Citigroup, and Netflix, have slashed their tax bills in the years since the passage of the Trump tax cuts, with nearly a quarter paying rates in the single digits and 23 paying nothing, a report has found.

The 2017 law cut the top corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%. But the new assessment of corporate tax avoidance, published today by the non-profit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (Itep), found that during the first five years the law was in effect, many profitable public companies in the US paid a far lower rate in practice.

Together, the 342 corporations studied by Itep paid an average effective tax rate of just 14.1%. Eighty six companies paid an average of less than 10%; 55 of those firms paid less than 5%; and 23 corporations, including T-Mobile US and Xcel Energy, paid zero (or less) federal income tax over the five-year period – even though they made a profit each year.

Among the lowest taxpayers were companies including Netflix and Nike, as well as several corporations whose CEOs have become high-profile advocates for corporate social responsibility and “stakeholder capitalism”, such as Salesforce and Bank of America.

In the five years since the Trump tax law took effect, “the biggest and most profitable companies don’t appear to be paying anywhere close to that 21% rate”, said Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at Itep and the lead author of the report. “What Trump described as a big tax cut turned out to be just that.”

Between 2018 and 2022, Bank of America brought home more than $138bn in profits, yet the company paid only $5.3bn in federal income tax – an effective rate of 3.8%, Itep found.

Bank of America was recently named the