Citizens for Tax Justice 'Study' = Lie

Leftist Newspeak has sunk to a new low. Not happy with distortion, the Left are speaking outright lies. The subject of the lies are so dreary, most people would rather catch a nap. But I trained as an economist, which makes me immune to nap-inducing rays (however I emit nap-rays).

At hand is a "Study" from the far left Citizens for Tax Justice about what they call Corporate tax dodging. The "Study" claims 30 companies in the United States paid less than 0% tax in one year pf the last three years. The "Study" implies this happened despite each companies profitable status.

So I checked them out.

According to Citizens for Tax Justice, the worst offender is PEPCO Holdings, the Potomac Electric Power Company. CTJ claims "Pepco Holdings had the lowest effective tax rate of all the companies in the study, at negative 57.6% (effectively, a tax refund) over the three year period." There is no way to match CTJ's claim with any reliable source.

PEPCO's published earnings report, as required by the US Government's Securities and Exchange Commission, states PEPCO paid:
$90 million in federal taxes in 2008,
$104 million in 2009,
$11 million in 201.
No time in the last three years has PEPCO experienced negative taxation.

The information is on page 148 of their annual shareholders report.

Citizens for Tax Justice is just badly messed up.

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Originally CTJ report attracted my interest because I expected to find evidence of state and federal corruption. I expected to find the government giving favorable tax treatment to their pet companies. CTJ seems to mistake government expenditure as direct tax relief.

Don't get me wrong, governments use tax credits to manipulate the market. Corruption's smoking gun will be when there is no discernible difference between two businesses, and one is getting a tax credit.

Consider corruption's smoking gun in the case of Gibson Guitar and Martin Guitar.