The United States Chamber of Commerce has called on the media and politicians
to get their facts straight regarding company taxation following recent reporting
of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) study on corporate tax liabilities.
“Once again, the GAO data has been twisted and misinterpreted by those
seeking to attack corporate America," Chief Economist Martin Regalia said
in a statement issued last week.
"Many news reports claim that the GAO study revealed that almost two-thirds
of companies in the US usually pay no corporate income taxes. What the GAO
report actually said was that for the period between 1998 and 2005, corporations — not
necessarily the same corporations — had no tax liability for one of the
eight years in question. If two-thirds of all corporations were paying no taxes
for all eight years, we would be reading about a Department of Justice (DOJ)
or Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigation into the matter and not some
synopsis of a GAO report," Regalia observed.
The findings of the report were seized upon by the Senators who requested the
GAO investigation, Byron Dorgan (D-N.D) and Carl Levin (D-MI), as evidence that
too many corporations are using "tax trickery" to send their profits
overseas and avoid paying their fair share in the United States.
"The tax system that allows this wholesale tax avoidance is an embarrassment
and unfair to hardworking Americans who pay their fair share of taxes,"
Dorgan remarked following the release of the GAO's findings.
However, Regalia argued that the Senators and the media at large have jumped
to the wrong conclusions, pointing out that there is a difference between not
paying taxes owed and not having a tax liability.
"The GAO report doesn’t say that businesses aren’t paying
taxes they owe. Rather, it says that some corporations did not have tax liabilities — in
other words, they did not owe taxes. You can have many billions of dollars in
revenue and still have R&D, labor-related and other expenses that are larger
than your revenues — and therefore no 'income' to tax," he noted.
According to Regalia, Internal Revenue Service data shows that the situation
with corporations is not much different from that with individuals and in 2005
– the last year of the GAO study – of the 134 million individual
income tax returns filed, approximately one-third – 44 million –
showed no income tax liability.
“In sum, the idea that there is a large pool of corporations not paying
taxes that they legally owe is just incorrect," he concluded.
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