Last Year, 32 Corporations Spent More on Their CEOs Than They Paid in Income Taxes

[amborin]

32 Corporations Spent More On Compensation For Top Executives In 2010 Than They Paid In Income Tax

Over the last few decades, executive pay at large corporations has skyrocketed. Today, American CEOs make 263 times the average compensation for American workers, up from the 30 to 1 ratio in the 1970s. In 2010 alone, CEO pay went up 27 percent while average worker pay went up just 2 percent.
At the same time, corporate tax revenue has plunged to historic lows. During the 1960s, for instance, the United States consistently raised nearly 4 percent of GDP in corporate revenue. During the 1970s, the total was still above 2.5 percent of GDP. But the U.S. now raises less than 1.5 percent of GDP from the corporate income tax.

According to a new report called “S.& P. 500 Executive Pay: Bigger Than …Whatever You Think It Is,” put together by the independent research firm R. G. Associates, there are currently 32 companies that actually spent more on compensation for their top executives in 2010 than they paid in corporate income taxes:

Total executive pay increased by 13.9 percent in 2010 among the 483 companies where data was available for the analysis. The total pay for those companies’ 2,591 named executives, before taxes, was $14.3 billion…Warming to his subject, Mr. Ciesielski also determined that 158 companies paid more in cash compensation to their top guys and gals last year than they paid in audit fees to their accounting firms. Thirty-two companies paid their top executives more in 2010 than they paid in cash income taxes.

This isn’t really surprising when you consider that several of the largest U.S. corporations simply paid no taxes at all last year. General Electric, for instance, made more than $5 billion last year, but had a tax rate of -64 percent, meaning it received billions in tax benefits. Boeing hasn’t paid any federal income tax in three years, while CEO Jim McNerny made $19 million last year.

snip

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/06/21/249949/32-corporations-spent-more-compensation-paid-taxes/

[John Paul Jones]

1. Does that include the taxes the CEOs paid on their salaries?

[Fumesucker]

4. Welcome to DU

:hi:

What do taxes on personal income have to do with corporate taxes?

[47of74]

2. I have an idea: Let's make doing that a felony

You wanna pay someone millions of dollars. You had better damn well pay millions in taxes then.

[Initech]

5. Better idea - 150% tax on executive salaries over $1mil/year.

They want to make that much? Their companies would be very hesitant to pay if they had to that back.

[Motown_Johnny]

17. I would suggest an Alternative Minimum Tax for Corporations based on income

instead of them paying only on profits


This would apply only to corporations not paying a reasonable amount of taxes on their profits. Even 1% of gross would be something.

[Initech]

3. Fucking thieves, every last god damn one of 'em!

[Octafish]

6. They earned it.

Their place in hell.

[FiveGoodMen]

7. If only we could build a Hell to put them in.

[Initech]

12. Maybe we could collectively build the real robot hell from Futurama.

:evilgrin:

[w0nderer]

16. poetic justice...pull a 'trading places' on them

watch that CEO ruin his manicure scrubbing toilets and mopping floors
as the former janitor with 5 years experience points out all the points he MISSED cleaning.

Then dock his pay or make him stay over to finish it before the 'former ceo' gets to walk out a dark
alley to the crappy car parked in a bad area, only to find the window broken, the radio stolen and the seats covered in glass and slashed then drive home tired to the bone sitting on what glass he couldn't brush from the seat
trip home 2 hours late after the police wouldn't listen to him for small cases like that in bad hoods

he's so late the stores are closed so he fails to pick up more food and has to make a dinner for 3 from cream of chicken and ramen noodles and bread and see the faces fall in disappointment
and later drop into bed with a noisy ac or fan or heater (or lack of them) and fall asleep trying to not worry about rent on the rathole and food for next week or power and how to afford to fix the window, and realize that the radio will never be replaced
and waking up the next morning to see that it rained in through the window of the car and some people thought the open window meant 'trash receptacle'.

Coming to work, smelling mildly of trash, with wet spots on clothing and ruffled hair from wind through window and getting warned for bad appearance.
---
wonder how many days like that it would take to teach a ceo to treat the workers better
---

the more they hurt the working class the worse it would get for them

a 'real' saturnalia month (live someone else's life for a few weeks) a year could help them possibly understand
but it would postpone an explosion of worker suppressed anger that _could_possibly_ lead to a systematic correction of values of society

a saturnalia wouldn't be as good as 'real' justice and working pay, but it might start some thoughts in the upper classes
and will explode the the MSM Bovine Fertilizer myth that the stress is SO horrible on poor overtaxed over-taxed overworked ceo's that they deserve _that_ high a pay

basically switch it up: top to bottom, second from top to second from bottom and so forth for one month
the median won't see much change, but the top and bottom will

[OhioChick]

8. Fucking shameful n/t

[shraby]

9. Not only that, but the CEO salaries are deductible as a

business expense...takes any possible tax bill down from what it might have been.

[w0nderer]

10. but but but they earned it right?

::silly sarcasm on::
they worked 263 times harder than the average worker

wait a second now
40 hours per week
times 263 (looks at total number of hours possible in a week)

nope that's not how they work harder!
--
well you see it's actually the pressures responsibility and stresses of a big company
much worse than worrying if:
you and your children will have roof over head
you can put food to put in belly
you have healthcare if you are dying, in pain or sick or your children are dying, in pain or sick
any of the above if you get sick or can't work for a week

any of the above in a year when someone decides to cut costs, will anyone pay you a parachute deal

nope that's not it either!
life and death versus immoral person dealing with other people's money, nu uh

--
wait wait i got it...
work is easy to measure, either in work performed (watt) or calories (energy taken in to be expended)

assuming a daily workload of semi physical position (me personally) would be burning ~3000 cal
so if they were doing 263 times the work i do
3000*263 = 789 000 cal
hey, they probably are more efficient at it so call it ~750 000 cal
a snickers bar has approx 280 cal per serving 59 g (58.7g)
so in a day they would use ~2679 snickers bars
since those are often charged at between 80 cents and a dollar
that's close to dollars per day
now do we all see why they need to be paid the big bucks..it's to cover all the extra 'FOOD'

btw that's ~158 kilos of snickers bars, or roughly 300+ pounds of snickers bars


::silly sarcasm off::

[Initech]

11. It might be "silly sarcasm" but I think your logic makes more sense than theirs does!

:rofl:

[w0nderer]

13. and that is the truly scary part

kind of scary when i run into the same problem theonion.com does
sarcasm is outpaced by reality :-p

one would expect these 263'er overachievers to be able to make up
better excuses for their pay check

[Initech]

14. True, true.

[ck4829]

15. But... but... taxes are preventing corporations from creating jobs!

This is what the media keeps saying! Are they lying to us?