91 Fortune 500 Companies Paid ZERO Federal Taxes Last Year

According to startling new data, a grand total of 91 Fortune 500 companies paid exactly ZERO dollars in federal income taxes in 2018, thanks to the GOP tax scam. On top of that, several hundred other companies paid less than half the effective tax rate, which is just as remarkable considering that Trump lowered that rate to just 21%. The government is now running on empty because of these tax cuts, as Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Well folks, at this point, we're just a few days away from the end of the year 2019 and as we approach 2020 we actually have to look backwards to 2018 because according to recent reports, the numbers are finally officially in for the tax year 2018 and it turns out that at least 91 companies listed on the fortune 500 list paid effectively $0 in federal income taxes for the year 2018 some of those companies include Netflix, Amazon, Chevron, Halliburton, IBM companies that pulled in billions of dollars in profit and paid $0 in federal income taxes. There are an additional 379 profitable corporations identified in this study that paid in effective federal income tax rate of 11.3% on their 2018 income. And here's the thing, the tax law, that Donald Trump, the Republican shove through two years ago to this month, lowered the federal tax rate for corporations from 35% to 21% which is the lowest rate they have ever had to pay 21% but even 21% was too much for these companies. 91 paid zero 379 of them paid 11% because no matter how low our taxes go for corporations, it will never be low enough. And here's the thing, and I'm going to read some more findings from this report in just a minute, but I want to point this out because I'm sick and tired of the Republican lies about it. They have told us every time they've cut taxes that if we lower the taxes, these corporations will come back. They're going to stop hiding their money offshore, they're going to stop sending their jobs overseas. We just gotta lower it, just a little for them. Then they're going to pay their taxes, they're going to do everything here in the United States and everything is going to be good, great and grand, and eventually the money will trickle down to you. It's literally never happened. Never. Not once, not a single time in the history of Republican tax cuts. Have those talking points actually played out the way they say they will and we're watching it right now. The federal government is running out of money according to a recent report by CNBC because they're taking in less tax revenue than ever in modern history, and this is why this is the Republican's fault, but rather than repeal these tax cuts, what are they going to do? They're going to cut your social security, they're going to cut your Medicare, they're going to cut your Medicaid, they're going to cut funding for programs for schools. They're going to cut back on everything they can that actually helps American citizens so that they can continue to give these billion dollar corporations more tax breaks. Here's a couple more findings from this truly infuriating report here. This is from the Institute on taxation and economic policy. Fully half of the companies in our sample paid effective tax rates that were less than half of the new statutory rate of 21% the tax breaks identified in this report are highly concentrated among a few very large corporations. Just 25 companies claimed 37.1 billion in tax breaks in 2018 that's almost exactly half the 73.9 billion in tax subsidies claimed by all 379 companies in the study, just five companies, bank of America, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Amazon and Verizon collectively enjoyed more than 16 billion in tax breaks in 2018 the 11.3% average effective tax rate paid by profitable corporations is the lowest average effective rate identified by ITEep Institute on taxation and economic policy

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