The reason they didn't pay taxes was that they didn't make a profit.marksiwel wrote: I'll settle for the companies just paying taxes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02324.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
About two-thirds of corporations operating in the United States did not pay taxes annually from 1998 to 2005, according to a new report scheduled to be made public today from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Just because they made "2.5 trillion" in sales doesn't answer the question of what their profits were. And I would guess that the vast majority of that $2.5 trillion was made by the 1/3 of corporations that DID pay taxes.The GAO did not analyze whether the firms had profits that should have been taxed
It is irresponsible to first report the quote above, then quote some Democrat calling it "a shocking indictment of the current tax system". Not that I want to support or defend out tax system.
The tax system may be broken, but the two-thirds not paying taxes statistic is meaningless without more information.
You do know, right, that most small businesses are "subchapter S" businesses, where the profits are reported on the owners 1040 returns. NONE of those businesses directly pay income taxes at all.