If you needed evidence that corporate tax rates are far too low and large corporations receive far too many tax benefits, look no further than the new study just published by Citizens for Tax Justice.

CTJ undertook a study of the 280 largest companies in the United States to see what they actually paid (or didn't pay) in taxes. From their press release:

“These 280 corporations received a total of nearly $224 billion in tax subsidies,” said Robert McIntyre, Director at Citizens for Tax Justice and the report’s lead author. “This is wasted money that could have gone to protect Medicare, create jobs and cut the deficit.”

30 Companies average less than zero tax bill in the last three Years, 78 had at least one no-tax year.

Financial services received the largest share of all federal tax subsidies over the last three years. More than half the tax subsidies for companies in the study went to four industries: financial services, utilities, telecommunications, and oil, gas & pipelines.

U.S. corporations with significant foreign profits paid tax rates to foreign countries that were almost a third higher than they paid to the IRS on their domestic profits.

That $224 billion number is really significant. If we were to extrapolate that into a ten-year number to compare with CBO analyses of various revenue proposals, it would be an expenditure of about $750 billion over a ten-year period. Imagine that. We wouldn't have to worry about Medicare cuts or deep cuts to discretionary spending if those tax preferences were rolled back.

Digging deeper into the data reveals an inherent unfairness in how those tax subsidies are distributed. Retail and health industries paid, on average, 30 percent or more in corporate taxes. Here are how the tax goodies fell for the companies who paid little or no corporate taxes:

Effective tax rates varied widely by industry. Over the 2008-10 period, effective tax rates for our 280 corporations, when grouped by industry, ranged from a low of –13.5 percent (a negative rate) to a high of 30.4 percent. In the year 2010 alone, the range of industry tax rates was even greater, ranging from a low of – 36.4 percent up to a high of 30.6 percent.

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If you don't know what ipecac is, it's stuff that makes you vomit. These three news items came in one right after the other, and the combination had the same effect as a dose of the nasty stuff.

First, the chart above, courtesy of Talking Points Memo. It illustrates the share of corporate profits workers aren't getting. On the other hand, (and offered as the second item) the corporations are doing quite well, but of course, there are no jobs being created.

Finally, we have US Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donahoe, who is arguably one of the most evil men to ever be in a position of power saying this to the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce:

“Major corporations are sitting on $2 trillion,” Donohue said, adding that they are cautious about investing those dollars because of the uncertainty of new rules and regulations. “People are holding onto their money.”

With the potential “explosion” of regulations, Donohue said the U.S. Chamber has its own law firm that regularly sues the federal government in an effort to protect the nation’s business interests.

What baloney. This notion that regulations are causing uncertainty is another Big Lie that gets told routinely to justify the efforts of corporations to sit on investment and expansion until they get their way. Turn blue, corporations, go ahead.

But Donohue didn't stop there. He took aim at the ultra-conservatives who think holding the debt ceiling hostage is a problem. However, I don't view what he said as something to celebrate. It's pretty sickening, actually.

Yes, it will be raised, Donohue answered, mainly because the country can not afford to not pay its bills. To those newly-elected representatives who say they aren’t going to raise the debt ceiling and will shut down government, Donohue said the U.S. Chamber has its own message: “We’ll get rid of you.”

He then went on to praise U.S. House Speaker John Boehner for his Congressional leadership.

“He’s growing into his shorts,” Donohue said. “He’s put on his big boy pants.”

That message -- the "we'll get rid of you" threat -- should turn the stomach of every American regardless of their political ideology. This notion that elected representatives must do the bidding of the US Chamber of Commerce and their contingents or they'll be "offed" politically is the most thuggish, overt exercise of corporatism in politics I've ever seen.

Lindsay checks out the story which has non-profits terrified.

Corporations Have Higher Profits During Liberal Presidencies Liberal Truths

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2003 the years where a Republican President was in office show that Corporations have lower Profits Before Tax than when a Democratic President was in office.

Republican President George Herbert Walker Bush:
In 1990 Corporate Profits Before Tax was $236,000,000,000.

Democratic President William Jefferson Clinton:
Started his Presidency in 1993 with Corporate Profits Before Tax increasing to $305,000,000,000.
Ended his Presidency in 2000 with Corporate Profits Before Tax further increasing to $436,000,000,000.

Republican President George Walker Bush:
Started his Presidency in 2001 with Corporate Profits Before Tax reducing to $327,000,000,000.
By the end of 2002 Corporate Profits Before Tax were further reduced to $316,000,000,000.

The highest rate of Corporate Profits Before Tax between 1990 and 2002 was in 1997 with $494,000,000,000 when William Jefferson Clinton was President.

Source: 15-business.pdf No. 737

THE YEAR IN REVIEW

via Kevin Drum....I've been in a rotten mood lately, a feeling that I blame on the 109th Congress. Here's a summary of their first few weeks of activity:

• Passed: A tort reform bill that makes it harder for ordinary citizens to sue corporations who harm them.
• Coming soon: A bankruptcy bill that will make it harder for distressed workers to declare bankruptcy and will increase credit card company profits by an estimated $1 billion.
• Coming soon: A transportation bill that adds two unpaid hours onto the work days of short-haul and long-haul truckers.
• In progress: Changes to Social Security that will almost certainly include benefit cuts for current workers.
• In progress: Making permanent a set of tax cuts that primarily helps the upper class.

And it's only the middle of March. Can anyone name even one thing the Bush administration has done this year — or is proposing to do — that would benefit ordinary workers? Do they even pretend to care any more?

UPDATE: I'm informed that the "unpaid hours" amendment to the transportation bill failed to pass in the House and probably won't in the Senate either. I feel better already!

Good PR move, I guess. Obama allowed public anger to build and now it looks like he only slammed the bankers because he had to. Which is, you know, probably true.

I prefer Yves' idea: That this should be positioned as a windfall profits tax. They didn't earn these outrageous profits; those profits wouldn't exist with the federal government infusing cash into their dying companies.

President Obama plans Thursday to propose a sharp increase in the taxes paid by the nation's largest financial institutions designed to raise $90 billion over the next decade while constraining the industry's ability to take large risks and reap outsize rewards, a senior administration official said.

The tax proposal, which would require congressional approval, is meant to make a splash, demonstrating to the public that the administration is now focused on reforming the financial industry after more than a year of bailout efforts. The official, who spoke with reporters before the president's announcement on condition of anonymity, said that large firms were reaping renewed profit from a rescue intended to help the broader economy and that the public deserved a larger share of the money.

The nation's largest banks are expected to report large annual profits over the next week, along with plans to set aside billions of dollars for employee bonuses.

[...] Industry executives are warning that hitting banks will hurt the broader economy because firms would seek to impose the cost of any tax on customers.

"Using tax policy to punish people is a bad idea," Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of J.P. Morgan Chase, told reporters Wednesday after his testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. "All businesses tend to pass their costs on to customers."

[...] Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said he supports the administration's plan, but he also is holding hearings next week to consider additional ways of curbing compensation, including reversing a cut in the tax rate that applies to the largest bonuses.

Frank said he was unmoved by the argument that the higher taxes might reduce the flow of money to the broader economy. He said some banking activities appeared to have only one purpose: "to simply make money for the people who participate."

He also played down concerns that talent would leave the industry.

"I don't know where people would go for comparable salaries," Frank said. "I guess perhaps they could star in major motion pictures."

I'm totally against the Afghanistan war, as C&Lers know, and it was lost as soon as Bush and Cheney decided to attack Iraq. Any chance to stabilize that region was lost immediately thereafter. The world had rallied around Afghanistan in such a way that that country could have been reconstructed and repaired by now.

So President Obama finds himself in a bad situation caused by conservative beliefs and now there really is only one strategy left: When do we leave? That being said, Fred Thompson, in a hatchet-job fashion, says the Afghan war is lost too, because Obama just isn't into it. Wow, aren't Republicans into fighting endless wars for profits?

Fred Thompson must know that Bush abandoned Afghanistan and forged his move to attack and remove the Taliban as nothing more than a chess move to attack Iraq.

Former Sen. Fred Thompson today intensified his party's criticism of President Obama's long deliberation over policy in Afghanistan, announcing that Obama's delay signals that "the war has been lost" and that nothing the president now does will "make any difference."

"It really doesn't matter how President Obama divides the Afghan baby, how he splits the difference between McChrystal and Biden. Because the war has been lost," Thompson said on his radio show today. "I say this because of one sad and simple fact. The president does not have the will and determination to do what's necessary to win it. His heart's not in it, and never has been. The Taliban knows it. Al Qaeda knows it. Our allies know it. And the American people know it.

Americans turned against these two wars a long time ago and public opinion will only keep declining. Vermin like Thompson only look for opportunities to cut up the president as often as possible. And they are using this conflict like the blade. They are a sad movement.

Thompson has the nerve to suggest that a sitting President doesn't care what happens in a war that is taking place now. These conservatives have no shame and that's why conservatism is a sham.

Remember the Faux outrage over Harry Reid?

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol said that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) remark that the Iraq war is lost is “much more disgraceful” than Sen. Trent Lott’s (R-MS) 2002 claim that the country would be much better off if it had maintained racist segregation policies.

“What Harry Reid said is much more disgraceful than anything Trent Lott said, and I do think Democrats should ask Harry Reid to step down,” Kristol said.

Nice to see Obama taking them on like this. I just wish he talked like this more often:

WASHINGTON — President Obama mounted a frontal assault on the insurance industry on Saturday, accusing it of airing “deceptive and dishonest ads” to derail his health care legislation and threatening to strip the industry of its longstanding exemption from federal anti-trust laws.

In unusually harsh terms, Mr. Obama cast insurance companies as obstacles to change interested only in preserving their own “profits and bonuses” and willing to “bend the truth or break it” to stop his drive to remake the nation’s health care system. The president used his weekly radio and Internet address to push back against industry assertions that legislation will drive up premiums.

The transcript is much more blunt:

A new report for the Business Roundtable – a non-partisan group that represents the CEOs of major companies – found that without significant reform, health care costs for these employers and their employees will well more than double again over the next decade. The cost per person for health insurance will rise by almost $18,000. That’s a huge amount of money. That’s going to mean lower salaries and higher unemployment, lower profits and higher rolls of uninsured. It is no exaggeration to say, that unless we act, these costs will devastate the US economy.

This is the unsustainable path we’re on, and it’s the path the insurers want to keep us on. In fact, the insurance industry is rolling out the big guns and breaking open their massive war chest – to marshal their forces for one last fight to save the status quo. They’re filling the airwaves with deceptive and dishonest ads. They’re flooding Capitol Hill with lobbyists and campaign contributions. And they’re funding studies designed to mislead the American people.

Of course, like clockwork, we’ve seen folks on cable television who know better, waving these industry-funded studies in the air. We’ve seen industry insiders – and their apologists – citing these studies as proof of claims that just aren’t true. They’ll claim that premiums will go up under reform; but they know that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found that reforms will lower premiums in a new insurance exchange while offering consumer protections that will limit out-of-pocket costs and prevent discrimination based on pre-existing conditions. They’ll claim that you’ll have to pay more out of pocket; but they know that this is based on a study that willfully ignores whole sections of the bill, including tax credits and cost savings that will greatly benefit middle class families. Even the authors of one of these studies have now admitted publicly that the insurance companies actually asked them to do an incomplete job.

Do you ever get the feeling that the class war is over, and their side won? Money for these guys - but massive conniptions over paying for national health care?

Staff at Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm's 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms.

A lack of competition and a surge in revenues from trading foreign currency, bonds and fixed-income products has sent profits at Goldman Sachs soaring, according to insiders at the firm.

Staff in London were briefed last week on the banking and securities company's prospects and told they could look forward to bumper bonuses.

Figures next month detailing the firm's second-quarter earnings are expected to show a further jump in profits. Warren Buffett, who bought $5bn of the company's shares in January, has already made a $1bn gain on his investment.

OurFuture: Everything about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been nationalized - except the profits and the pay scales of their executives.

The Washington Note: Israel deals with reality in the region. Exchanging prisoners is better than exchanging rockets.

earthfamilyalpha: The Stupid Economy

Washington Monthly: How black Baltimore drug dealers are using white supremacist legal theories to confound the Feds.

Angry Bear: Did Jonah Goldberg learn about the economics of oil from Dr. Newt Gingrich?

The Washington Independent: The Bush Crime Family's latest latest consigliere, Michael Mukasey, claimed executive privilege, in CIA leak matter. Unsurprisingly, Don Dubya sees nothing wrong with treason.