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“These 25 companies are extreme examples of how large corporations can get away with picking Uncle Sam’s pocket,” report co-author Scott Klinger said in a statement. “And while the CEOs…

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“These 25 companies are extreme examples of how large corporations can get away with picking Uncle Sam’s pocket,” report co-author Scott Klinger said in a statement. “And while the CEOs clearly benefit, working and middle class families and small businesses are left to pick up the tab.”

“Instead of sharing responsibility for addressing our nation’s fiscal challenges, corporations are rewarding CEOs for aggressive tax avoidance,” says Chuck Collins, a senior scholar at IPS who co-authored the report, in a written statement.

“There is a whole set of special rules that favor large corporations and allow them not to pay their fair share,” said Scott Klinger, an associate fellow at the institute, known as the IPS.

Before the deficit reduction “super-committee” embarks on a $1–2 trillion course of human slashonomics, it should take a hard look at the Institute for Policy Studies’ (IPS) eighteenth annual executive compensation report, which details how corporations are rewarding CEOs for aggressive tax avoidance—to the tune of at least $100 billion in lost tax revenues every year.

“Tax reform has to close up some of these loopholes and the offshore system,” Chuck Collins, one of the report’s authors, said in an interview. “We might be able to lower the overall corporate rate by broadening the base.”

“Of the 25 companies that paid their CEO more than Uncle Sam, 20 also spent more on lobbying lawmakers than they paid in corporate taxes,” according to the institute. “Eighteen gave more to the political campaigns of their favorite candidates than they paid to the IRS in taxes.”

“What are America’s CEOs doing to deserve their latest bountiful rewards?” IPS wrote in their report. “We have no evidence that CEOs are fashioning, with their executive leadership, more effective and efficient enterprises. On the other hand, ample evidence suggests that CEOs and their corporations are expending considerably more energy on avoiding taxes than perhaps ever before — at a time when the federal government desperately needs more revenue to maintain basic services for the American people.”

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