This tax season will be kind to Bank of America and Wells Fargo: It appears that neither bank will have to pay federal income taxes for 2009.
Bank of America probably won't pay federal taxes because it lost money in the U.S. for the year. Wells Fargo was profitable, but can write down its tax bill because of losses at Wachovia, which it rescued from a near collapse.
The idea of the country's No. 1 and No. 4 banks not paying federal income taxes may be anathema to millions of Americans who are grumbling as they fill out their own tax forms this month. But tax experts say the banks' situation is hardly unique.
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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/26/91119/bank-of-america-wells-fargo-might.html#ixzz1F5fDaHvC CITIGROUP: Citigroup’s deferred income taxes for the third quarter of 2010 amounted to a grand total of $0.00. At the same time, Citigroup has continued to pay its staff lavishly. “John Havens, the head of Citigroup’s investment bank, is expected to be the bank’s highest paid executive for the second year in a row, with a compensation package worth $9.5 million.”
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Citigroup_%28C%29/Data/Deferred_Income_Taxes/2010/Q3http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/business/25citi.html?_r=1 EXXON-MOBIL: The oil giant uses offshore subsidiaries in the Caribbean to avoid paying taxes in the United States. Although Exxon-Mobil paid $15 billion in taxes in 2009, not a penny of those taxes went to the American Treasury. This was the same year that the company overtook Wal-Mart in the Fortune 500. Meanwhile the total compensation of Exxon-Mobil’s CEO the same year was over $29,000,000.
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/04/06/exxon-zero-taxes/ GENERAL ELECTRIC: In 2009, General Electric — the world’s largest corporation — filed more than 7,000 tax returns and still paid nothing to U.S. government. They managed to do this by a tax code that essentially subsidizes companies for losing profits and allows them to set up tax havens overseas.
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/04/22/corporate-tax-offshore/ WELLS FARGO: Despite being the fourth largest bank in the country, Wells Fargo was able to escape paying federal taxes by writing all of its losses off after its acquisition of Wachovia. Yet in 2009 the chief executive of Wells Fargo also saw his compensation “more than double” as he earned “a salary of $5.6 million paid in cash and stock and stock awards of more than $13 million.”
http://www.americanconsumernews.com/2010/03/no-taxes-for-bank-of-america-nyse-bac-and-wells-fargo-nysewfc.htmlIn the coming months, politicians across the country are going to tell Americans that the only way to stave off huge deficit and balance the budgets is by gutting programs for the poor, eviscerating support for the middle class, eliminating labor rights, and decimating the government’s ability to serve the public interest. This is a lie. The United States is the richest country in the history of the world, and income inequality is higher now than it has been at any time since the 1920′s, with the top
“top 1 percentile of households taking home 23.5 percent of income in 2007.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/15/11-richest-countries_n_717558.html#s140144&title=11_Netherlandshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/22/income-inequality-america_n_772687.htmlhttp://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/26/main-street-tax-cheats/