Brad Johnson Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green.
Tax breaks and subsidies for energy companies have gotten so extreme that dozens of top companies have made billions in profits while having negative taxes...During these years of negative taxation, 32 companies in the fossil-fuel industry -- from Exxon Mobil and Peabody Energy to ConEd and PG&E -- transformed a tax responsibility of $17.3 billion on $49.4 billion in pretax profits into tax benefits of $6.5 billion, a $24 billion windfall.
The official corporate tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, but subsidies and dodges make that figure meaningless. The overall tax rate for top utility companies from 2008 to 2010 was 3.7 percent [PDF], the report found. Companies in the oil, gas, and pipelines sector paid 15.7 percent....
