In all, 26 companies paid their CEOs more in 2011 than they paid in 2011 federal taxes. A new study says?Citigroup, Abbott Labs, and AT&T, among others, paid CEOs more than they gave to Uncle Sam.
Abbott Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Miles D. White greets college students participating in Abbott's award-winning internship program in this 2007 photo from Abbott's headquarters in suburban Chicago. The drugmaker is disputing a report that it paid Mr. White more in pay than it paid in taxes to the US Treasury.
Abbott/PRNewsFoto/File
EnlargeCitigroup, Abbott Laboratories, and AT&T are among the 26 companies that paid more to their?CEOs?in 2011 than they did in U.S. federal?taxes, according to a study released on Thursday.
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Tax breaks on research and development, past losses, and foreign-held earnings were among those lightening the tax load for many companies on the list, said the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C.
Citi, Abbott and AT&T all took issue with the institute's methodology. All three said they paid all?taxes?owed in 2011.
During a presidential election cycle in which wealth and?taxes?are often debated, the study's authors said the U.S. tax code has become an enabler of large CEO pay, while also offering companies ways to reduce their tax bills.
Four pay-related tax breaks combined to cost taxpayers $14 billion in uncollected federal?taxes, the report said.
The four included breaks dealing with performance-based chief executive pay and stock options, as well as the preferential 15 percent tax rate on carried interest enjoyed by private equity partners and other financiers, it said.
Compensation for the 26?CEOs?whose pay surpassed their companies' corporate tax bills averaged $20.4 million, according to the study. That average was up 23 percent over last year.
The average was also significantly higher than pay tracked by separate studies of broader groups. For instance, $10.3 million was the average 2011 direct compensation for 300 large-company?CEOs?tracked by pay consultants Hay Group.
CURRENT U.S.?TAXES?PAID EYED
To get its list, the institute compared CEO pay to current U.S.?taxes?paid, excluding foreign and state and local?taxes?that may also have been paid, as well as deferred?taxes?that can often be far larger than current?taxes?paid.
The group's rationale was that U.S.?taxes?paid are the closest approximation available in public documents to what companies may have actually written in their checks for last year to the?U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
Among companies topping the institute's list:
* Citigroup, the financial services giant, with a tax refund of $144 million based on prior losses, paid CEO Vikram Pandit $14.9 million in 2011, despite an advisory vote against it by 55 percent of shareholders.
* Telecoms group AT&T paid CEO Randall Stephenson $18.7 million, but was entitled to a $420 million tax refund thanks to billions in tax savings from recent rules accelerating depreciation of assets.
* Drugmaker Abbott Laboratories paid CEO Miles White $19 million, while garnering a $586 million refund. Abbott has 64 subsidiaries in 16 countries considered by authorities to be tax havens, the institute said.
ABBOTT TAKES ISSUE
"This is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts," Abbott spokesman?Scott Stoffel?said.
He said Abbott did not get a rebate, but paid the U.S. government $700 million in federal income?taxes?in 2011, and that the report's numbers reflect a non-cash accounting adjustment caused by the resolution of various tax matters.
A Citigroup spokeswoman said that, while the company did not pay federal income tax in 2011, that was due to substantial losses it recorded in 2008 and 2009, a break available to all businesses in similar straits.
She also noted that?Citi?paid on average $3.7 billion a year in federal income?taxes?from 2000 to 2006, and paid other?taxes?last year, including more than $3 billion in payroll?taxes, and that Pandit voluntarily took a salary of just $1 in 2010.
AT&T said in a statement its CEO's pay was closely tied to performance and was fair, and that the accelerated deductions that lowered its federal?taxes?stemmed in part from $20 billion spent in support of the U.S. economy and jobs. The company reported paying $3.8 billion in other?taxes?last year, and hundreds of millions in federal income?taxes?in 2010.
All the tax breaks identified in the study are legal and shareholders generally expect companies to take advantage of any reasonable tax breaks they can, said?David Wise, a senior principal with Hay Group.
If the tax code changed to eliminate pay-related deductions, like the stock option deduction, he said, "individual companies could navigate that fairly easily. But collectively, those dollars would add up and increase the tax base."
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