A recent study of 288 Fortune 500 corporations, all of which were profitable between 2008 and 2012, has found that 111 companies paid no federal income taxes in at least one of the five years.
Although federal tax law calls for a 35% tax rate on corporate profits, the average effective rate for the 288 companies studied was 19.4%
Duke Energy was one of many companies not to pay any income tax between 2008 and 2012. American Electric Power, Consolidated Edison, FirstEnergy, NextEra Energy, Pepco Holdings, PG&E and Wisconsin Energy all paid no tax during the five-year period.
“Our federal taxes were lowered by bonus depreciation rules, temporarily put in place as a place as a part of the 2009 federal stimulus to help create jobs,”
“This enabled us to expense a significant portion of major projects in the early years of operation but we will still pay the federal taxes over the expected 30-40 year life of the projects.” spokesman Tom Williams told Newsobserver.com.
Williams also said that the report ignored the hundreds of millions of dollars in state and local taxes that Duke paid each year.
This announcement comes at the worst possible time for Duke Energy, which has come under scrutiny recently after a coal ash spill in North Carolina as well as the death of one of its workers on Thursday.
