

Study: Companies paid more to CEOs than in US tax (2012) - npguy
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/study-companies-paid-more-ceos-040218164.html

======
ajiang
I'm not agreeing / disagreeing on both the issues at hand here (US CEOs get
paid too much, US corporations don't pay enough in taxes), but it's important
to take these statistics with a huge grain of salt. In any given year, a
corporation's tax paid can vary widely. It's not common to see very little tax
paid for perfectly legitimate reasons such as operating loss, acquisition of
companies with net operating loss, tax shields from major capital investments,
etc. It's a significantly more meaningful to look at these statistics over
time and with the context of the individual businesses.

~~~
jstelly
Also without seeing more of the detail of the analysis there are perfectly
reasonable cases for this, e.g. A company with 1 employee (the CEO) has a
profit of $1,000,000. This company pays corporate income tax on the profits.

The next year the same company decides to take all of its profits and pay them
to the CEO (he's the only employee). Now that company supports this statistic
(pays no corporate income tax since there is now no profit so by definition
pays the CEO more than it pays in taxes), but now the CEO pays personal income
tax on that profit.

This is by design in the US tax system isn't it? I don't see anything wrong in
this case. I realize that you can make it less clear by adding in some kinds
of equity compensation and other benefits.

