Republican Budget Lets Tech Giants Pay Less Than Average Families
At a glance:
Five major corporations paid an average 4.9% tax rate -- lower than poorest Americans
Tesla paid $0 in federal taxes
If companies paid full 21% corporate rate, federal government would have collected $51 billion more in revenue
The federal budget passed by Republicans last year updated a number of tax policies and as Connecticut residents filter through changes to the tax codes, major corporations are paying less in federal income tax than the average household.
In its 2025 annual report, Live Nation Entertainment, one of the largest live entertainment companies in the world, reported it paid $0 in federal income taxes despite earning $145 million in profits for the year, TicketNews reported. Live Nation stated it generated a taxable loss for 2025, as tax provisions under the new federal budget allowed it to avoid federal tax liability.
They’re far from the only ones, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. In addition to LiveNation, four of the biggest technology companies in the world – Amazon, Alphabet (formerly Google), Meta (formerly Facebook) and Tesla – earned a collective $315 billion in profits in 2025. Despite that, they paid a collective 4.9% in federal corporate income taxes, with Tesla paying $0 in federal taxes.
If these companies paid the full 21% federal corporate income tax rate, they would have spent $51 billion; if they paid the full tax rate prior to President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts that reduced it from 35% to 21%, they would have owed closer to $95 billion. That revenue now disappears from federal coffers.
Alphabet paid the highest effective tax rate among the five companies at 8%, paying $11.3 billion on $141.6 billion in income. That’s just below the 10% minimum tax rate for filers earning between $0 and $11,925.
Under the federal budget, there are more than $750 million in business tax cuts, the Center for American Progress reported, including reduced taxes on investments like research and development and manufacturing. It also provides more generous deductions for business debt payments, likely the mechanism utilized by these corporations, as well as cuts benefiting specific industries, and deductions for business owners.
By Joe O’Leary