A study released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reveals that the majority of corporations pay no federal taxes on profits accrued through business conducted within the US.

From 1998-2005, the period covered by the survey, about two thirds of both domestic and international businesses paid no federal taxes, while about one quarter of large US corporations, defined as those with over $250 million in assets and at least $50 million in sales, had no tax liability.

While it failed to name the ways specific corporations avoided taxes, the GAO survey, based on Internal Revenue Service records, attributes the failure to three factors: tax credits, operating losses and “transfer pricing,” which means corporations internally shift taxable profits to their own subsidiaries in lower-tax nations.

The decline in the taxes that corporations actually pay is also suggested by the decline in the relative share these taxes contribute to the federal budget. According to an April report issued by the liberal Economic Policy Institute (EPI), in the 1950s corporate taxes represented one quarter of all federal revenue. Since 2000, this figure has fallen to about one tenth. The resulting shortfall has largely been made up through payroll taxes on US workers, according to the EPI.

The GAO study also listed the sustaining of regular operating losses as a possible explanation for corporations’ failure to pay taxes. Of the millions of companies submitting tax forms in the period, the vast majority were small businesses. There is no reason to doubt that many of these small ventures lose money year after year, and are dependant for their survival upon tax credits. Yet the crisis of the auto and airline industries demonstrates that the piling up of debt extends to the biggest corporations as well. At the same time, the tax code encourages companies to claim losses precisely as a means of avoiding tax payments.

Maybe if we elect McCain he will just give them a check once a year as compensation for their actions.  People are seriously ignorant at election time.