The report by Ms. Warren found that the tax would require companies such as Amazon, FedEx, Google, Facebook, General Motors, T-Mobile and Verizon to pay more to the United States government. A recent report by the Joint Committee on Taxation determined that the proposal would generate $319 billion over 10 years.
“Giant corporations have figured out how to game the system so that the costs of running this country are borne by hardworking families while these big corporations scoop up all of the profits and pay little or nothing in taxes,” Ms. Warren said in an interview. “It’s time to put a stop to that.”
Ms. Warren’s office used data compiled by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy on publicly traded companies in the Fortune 500 and S&P 500. The analysis considered “taxes paid” as a company’s current income tax expense, or how much they paid in U.S. federal taxes and foreign taxes in 2020.
According to Ms. Warren’s analysis, Amazon was able to reduce its tax rate to 11.5 percent rather than 21 percent in 2020. The tech company would have paid $836 million more in federal and foreign income taxes had the minimum tax been in place, according to Ms. Warren’s analysis. Amazon declined to comment.
The report also found that FedEx had a 7.2 percent effective tax rate and, if the new tax was in place, would have paid $518 million more in taxes in 2020. FedEx said that the analysis was “premature” and that it paid all of the taxes it owed.