EXXon Pays Too Little

Wow, turns out, EXXon pays about the same percentage in tax as the Top 400, about half what they should pay:

"Exxon Mobil registered an average 17.6 percent federal effective corporate tax rate on its annual earnings in the three years spanning 2008 to 2010. Its average domestic profits exceeded $6.8 billion. And as a 2011 Citizens for Tax Justice report points out:

Over the past two years, ExxonMobil reported $9,910 million in pretax U.S. profits. But it enjoyed so many tax subsidies that its federal income tax bill was only $39 million -- a tax rate of only 0.4 percent.

Even when Exxon Mobil had a record profit of $40 billion in 2008 due to record oil prices it had only a 31 percent effective tax rate. That’s 13 percent lower than the maximum 35 percent despite being Exxon Mobil's fifth year as the top corporate earner in Fortune 500’s annual listing. The company paid no taxes at all to the U.S. federal government in 2009 on its domestic profits of nearly $2.6 billion. It appears that they avoided the tax man that year by legally funneling their profits through wholly owned subsidiaries in countries like the Cayman Islands, and reinvesting their earnings overseas."

It looks like the ultra rich and most profitable corporations have found a way to pay only the percentage they think is fair.  I mean, if you asked them what they thought would be fair, wouldn't they jump at 17-18%?  What a deal!  But we all have to pay more taxes than we want to, at least, those of us in the bottom 99% that are people do.