The Myth (Big Lie) of "Companies That Don't Pay Taxes"

Companies create the jobs that pay the wages that get taxed by the government …

Labor Force Participation Rates Directly Correlate to Taxes Collected

The more jobs a company creates, the more income taxes the government rakes in. Conversely, the more the government taxes companies and raises the minimum wage, the fewer jobs companies create. Ergo, companies create jobs that create tax payments; governments destroy tax revenue when they excessively tax companies, because excessive taxes destroy jobs.

The federal Government's double-dip

Government taxes the income of those who work in the jobs the companies create, then they turn around and tax the companies on top of the income taxes paid by the companys' workers. 

Example: General Motors: 

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In 2020, the average rate of pay for a General Motors employee was $27.00 per hour, with an average annual bonus of $8,000. All in, the average annual pay was $62,540 dollars. Multiply that by 155,000 workers and you get an annual payroll of $9,693,700,000. That's almost TEN BILLION dollars in payroll. Now, let's assume that GM employees paid,  on average, a modest 7% of their income to the Federal government in income tax. That's $678,559,000 (678 MILLION) dollars in federal taxes that were made possible ONLY because GM created and sustained 155,000 jobs in 2020.

"But wait!" you might argue. "GM did not pay those taxes, they were paid by GM employees."  The counter-argument is, of course, "how many tax dollars would the Government have taken in from those same employees if GM did not exist?" Sure, the GM employees might have worked for some other company, but the point remains that whatever company employs them ultimately is the payor of the income tax. There are no income taxes if there is no income. It is only fair and right to say that GM created the wages that led to $678 million in tax revenues. And on top of the individual income tax revenues paid by GM employees and made possible only by being employed by GM, the government insists that GM (and all companies) should pay an additional, exorbitant corporate income tax, a policy that is totally contradictory to any attempt by the government to increase overall tax revenues.

If GM, for example, is directly and solely responsible for the government receiving 100's of millions of dollars in income taxes, then why is it that media outlets keep moaning and groaning about "rich companies that don't pay taxes?" The answer, of course, is that the media are talking about companies that sometimes (but not always) pay little or no federal corporate income tax. The media unfairly and deceptively never talk about all the taxes that companies do pay, and they never give credit to companies for creating the jobs that provide the government with hundreds of billions in income tax revenue.

Continuing with our example of General Motors:

According to corporate filings, GM paid $18 million in federal taxes last year, its largest tax bill since the bankruptcy. Despite the federal tax break, the company paid millions in other kinds of taxes: $83 million in state and local, and $552 million in foreign, taxes last year, for example. —2018 article, CNN Business.

So you can see that on top of the $678 million dollars that went into the government coffers because of the jobs that GM provided—and ONLY because of the jobs that GM provided—the media and cultural socialists were not satisfied with squeezing only another $100 million in federal and state taxes out of GM. The federal and state governments' thirsts for other peoples' money are unquenchable.

If the federal government really wants more taxes, the best (and perhaps the only) way to sustainably grow the amount of taxes taken in by the government is to promote policies that make it easier for companies to hire more employees and sustain high levels of employment. Truth be told, if the government would pursue policies that promote job creation and remove the government restraints toward that end, there would be no need for an additional federal corporate income tax at all—and in fact, that is the case currently, has always been the case, and always will be the case.

The next time you hear a so-called "journalist" or socialist activist complain about the amount of taxes a company pays or doesn't pay, ask them if they are talking about only the amount of federal corporate income taxes the company paid, or the total tax bill of the company including the income taxes generated by the company's total payroll. If the entity doing the complaining can quote only the amount of federal corporate taxes a company paid or did not pay, but has no idea how many income tax dollars were generated by the company's total payroll, disengage with them immediately because they have no idea what they are talking about. And you should not listen to or argue with people who have no idea what they are talking about.