President Joe Biden on Wednesday night said some of America’s largest corporations pay no taxes, giving a significant boost to recent research by the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
During his first address to a joint session of Congress, Biden didn’t mention the group by name, but he did directly pull data from the group’s early April report in calling for major corporations to “pay their fair share” of taxes.
“A recent study shows that 55 of the nation’s biggest corporations paid zero in federal income tax last year. No federal taxes on more than $40 billion in profits,” the president said. “That’s not right. We’re going to reform corporate taxes.”
The president added that those additional taxes would “help pay for the public investments their businesses will benefit from.” Steve Wamhoff, the institute’s director of federal tax policy and co-author of the report, said he was pleasantly surprised to hear the president cite research he had done with Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at ITEP.
The ITEP report was based on a review of annual financial records by the nation’s largest publicly traded companies for their most recent fiscal year. Wamhoff noted that Biden on the campaign trail last year had referenced his non-profit group’s findings of significant corporations not paying federal taxes.
“It illustrates why we need to fix the tax system,” Wamhoff said in an interview with USA TODAY. “It was a little surreal to be involved in something that the president of the United States mentioned. It’s also great to see this issue getting attention.
