In another case of corporate welfare we have the story of AT&T not only not owing any taxes but got a refund! On top of subsidies from USF, ATT got a $420M refund.
How?
"The company used new “accelerated depreciation” rules corporate America lobbied hard for over the past five years. While AT&T was slapping usage caps and overlimit fees on its customers ostensibly to help pay for network upgrades, AT&T wrote off the value of those upgrades on its federal taxes, winning turbo-charged tax deductions for every new cell tower, 4G upgrade, and just about everything else AT&T used to enhance its network."
CEO Randall Stephenson was paid $18.7 million and thanks to the Bush era tax cuts, saved $1,137,456 in taxes.
Lobbyist efforts pay off. AT&T spent $20M lobbying in 2011. They got all of it back plus the CEO's salary, paid for by taxpayers.
,P>Moral: get a really good tax attorney so that you can depreciate all of your upgrades!
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