Exxon Mobil paid no federal income taxes in 2009

[Blue_In_AK]

in their very profitable year.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/06/exxon-tax/

Last week, Forbes magazine published what the top U.S. corporations paid in taxes last year. “Most egregious,” Forbes notes, is General Electric, which “generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.” Big Oil giant Exxon Mobil, which last year reported a record $45.2 billion profit, paid the most taxes of any corporation, but none of it went to the IRS:

Exxon tries to limit the tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands that (legally) shelter the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. No wonder that of $15 billion in income taxes last year, Exxon paid none of it to Uncle Sam, and has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas.

Mother Jones’ Adam Weinstein notes that, despite benefiting from corporate welfare in the U.S., Exxon complains about paying high taxes, claiming that it threatens energy innovation research. Pat Garofalo at the Wonk Room notes that big corporations’ tax shelter practices similar to Exxon’s shift a $100 billion annual tax burden onto U.S. taxpayers. In fact, in 2008, the Government Accountability Office found that “two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005.”

[ClarkUSA]

1. Democrats can't erase oil subsidies that Clinton gifted to the industry via a loophole.

I recall reading in the NYT that the Clinton folks created a loophole that oil companies have successfully fought in court.

[AndyA]

2. Pretty outrageous. And gas prices are creeping up again.

Must be all that driving we're now doing because the economy is so red hot.

Or, everyone is beginning to take vacations, which just uses a ton a gas.

Or, the oil companies are just greedy f*ckers who get away with murder because no one has investigated the last time gas prices went through the roof, which contributed to the recession.

Take your pick. (There are probably more...)