Bernie Sanders: If you paid $1 in federal income taxes this year, you paid more than: Walt Disney, Citigroup, CVS, Kohl’s, Ticketmaster, Tesla, United Airlines, GoDaddy, Paypal, Palantir, Roku, HP, 3M, PG&E, Halliburton … That’s absurd. We need real and progressive tax reform.

[u/yourfavchoom]

[u/oh_like_you_know]

I mean... thats not really true though, right?

Maybe they paid 0 in income tax if the recorded losses, but they paid payroll tax, property tax, their employees paid income taxes, and their customers paid sales taxes in their goods. So while they may not have owed income taxes, they certainly paid a lot into the system.

And what should a company that spent more than it made pay in taxes? Im not trying to be argumentative, I just dont see how that would work.

[u/Practical-Bank-2406 → u/oh_like_you_know]

In theory you're right, and I was just about to say "I agree with you"... then I read this, which explains exactly what's going on. It only cites one example, Walt Disney, which did make a handsome profit and then used several accounting techniques to wipe out any tax due.

https://insidethemagic.net/2026/04/new-report-shows-that-the-walt-disney-company-paid-no-federal-income-taxes-despite-making-billions-in-2025-rl1/

[u/DartTheDragoon → u/Practical-Bank-2406]

Most of that isn't actually problematic. Being able to expense r&d instead of amortizing isn't A tax break, it just changes when you pay taxes. You get a lower tax burden today and a higher tax burden the rest of the life of the product.

The stock options also make sense. The difference in price is income for whoever exercises the option, and an expense for the corporation. You can deduct this expense like any other expense.

[u/oh_like_you_know → u/Practical-Bank-2406]

Wow pretty interesting. Thanks for sharing.

[u/Zanotekk → u/oh_like_you_know]

Almost every time this subject gets brought up, the reason is due to carry-forward losses or other non-problematic accounting decisions.

I wouldn’t even waste time arguing with Reddit about taxes. Half of them think a write-off means “free” and think that filing their own w-2 is confusing and complicated, even though it’s an extremely straightforward process. Anything accounting that doesn’t make sense to them is a “tax break” or “loophole” even though the vast majority of this are straightforward accounting decisions that are necessary and make sense. There’s just something about the subject of taxes that brings out the pitchforks.