You constantly hear conservatives say that if only we would cut taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals … the economy would REV itself up and jobs would be falling from trees like a Skittles commercial.  But tax rates under President Obama are lower than they were under President Bush for every single income.  Taxes for corporations are at a 10 year low (source) and profits are at an all time high (source).  And no America is not a high tax country (source).

Corporations are sitting on $5 TRILLION in cash reserves (source) but they’re not hiring at the pace we’d expect them to given those overwhelming cash reserves.  What’s happening in society is clear … America has cut taxes for corporations and the rich and the rest of us are having to increasingly shoulder the tax bill for the country.  That has costs … the conservative ideology that says “starve the beast” means we no longer invest in education or infrastructure the way we did.  The conservative vision is a failure – we’ve lived through trickle down economics and it doesn’t work.

Meanwhile in reality – the House Republicans actually passed a bill that would make huge cuts in the free lunch program nationwide for kids (source) and the Republican party is nominating a guy who wants to cut taxes for the rich even more (source).

You can download the .PDF report HERE.  Here are the four main findings from the Institute for Policy Studies:

• Of last year’s 100 highest-paid U.S. corporate chief executives, 26 took home more in CEO pay than their companies paid in federal income taxes, up from the 25 we noted in last year’s analysis. Seven firms made the list in both 2011 and 2010.
• The CEOs of these 26 firms received $20.4 million in average total compensation last year. That’s a 23 percent increase over the average for last year’s list of 2010′s tax dodging executives
• The four most direct tax subsidies for excessive executive pay cost taxpayers an estimated $14.4 billion per year—$46 for every American man, woman, and child. That amount could also cover the annual cost of hiring 211,732 elementary-school teachers or creating 241,593 clean-energy jobs.
• CEOs have benefited enormously from the Bush tax cuts for upper-income taxpayers. Last year, 57 CEOs saved more than $1 million on their personal income tax bills, thanks to these Bush-era cuts.

This chart below highlights the top 5 CEO’s in terms of taxable income in 2011 and the amount of money they saved courtesy of the Bush tax cuts; you don’t even want to know how much more money these guys would save under the Romney tax plan:

IPS puts together a list of those 26 corporations that paid more to their CEOs in compensation than they paid to the government in taxes:

Abbott Laboratories, Advanced Micro Dvices, Altera, AIG, Anadarko Petroleum, AT&T, Boeing, Broadcom, Citigroup, Cooper Industries, Danaher, Devon Energy, First Energy, Ford Motor, Halliburton, International Paper, Leucadia National, Marathon Oil, Marsh & McLennan, Motorola Mobility, Motorola Solutions, Newell Rubbermaid, Salesforce.com, Travelers Companies, and Tyco International.

The Associated Press adds to the report HERE:

Eighteen of the 26 companies received cash back or credits to apply against tax in the future, according to the report.

The study, a 45-page attack on the corporate tax code, said deductions and credits are allowing companies to lavish big pay packages on executives so they can cut their tax bills while Washington gets less money in a time of trillion-plus deficits.

“Our nation’s tax code has become a powerful enabler of bloated CEO pay,” the study said.

To calculate tax, the study used companies’ own math based on accounting rules. Regulators require companies to estimate their tax bill and disclose it in public documents for investors.

And yet despite all of this – corporations continue to call for a tax amnesty holiday to allow them to legally move their overseas profits which they funneled overseas to avoid taxes in the first place …. and conservatives really, really want to give it to them (again) (source).

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