Corporate tax law – at every government level in the US – is inordinately ludicrous.  A titanic mess of subsidies, deductions and loopholes.  Written by Big Business – for Big Business.

The on-paper federal tax rate for really large US companies is 21%.  Except here are some effective federal tax rates paid by some seriously huge companies in 2025:

Tesla made $5.7 billion.  And paid $0 in federal income taxes – 0%.

Amazon made $89 billion.  And paid $1.2 billion in federal income taxes – 1.4%.

Meta (Facebook) made $78.9 billion.  And paid $2.8 billion in federal income taxes – 3.6%.

Alphabet (Google) made $141.6 billion.  And paid $11.3 billion in federal income taxes – 8.0%.

The major oil companies averaged in 2025 an effective federal income tax rate of… -6.1%.  As in a NEGATIVE tax rate.  We the Taxpayers paid them – to make hundreds of billions of dollars.

We are told these absurd tax rates and breaks are in place to incentivize companies to do…basically what they are doing anyway.

Is Amazon going to stop selling in the US if we increase sixfold their effective federal tax rate – to a whopping 8.4%?  I highly doubt it. (more…)