With the global minimum tax rules in place, weighted by GDP and by revenue, corporate tax rates are actually fairly consistent across the world - roughly 25% worldwide. It's a myth that companies are not paying taxes, and also a myth that the largest sectors in the US are not paying taxes. It's a great talking point, though.
You also seem to be conflating investment for profit (GPUs for AI, for example) with income. Capital outlays of this type are almost always financed (see recently Nvidia, OpenAI + AMD, etc. deals). None of the large players are self-funding AI on that scale right now. This is why OpenAI's burn rate is so catastrophically high.
Perhaps for most companies, which was part of my point. But it's interesting to consider. I haven't read up too much on it in recent years.
The largest, most profitable international mega-corps always seem to pay much less because they can afford to game the system more.
It does look like my data is out of date concerning US corporate tax rates, which looks to be a flat 21% now from Trump's first term. Guess I'd only heard about the personal income tax breaks.
Spot checking Alphabet, it seems big corps might still be getting big tax breaks. A quick Google search on Alphabet Inc's effective tax rate AI summary of [1] gives:
> Alphabet's most recent effective tax rate was 16.91% for the quarter ending June 30, 2025, and 16.44% for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2024. The company's effective tax rate has varied, hitting a recent low of 13.9% in 2023 before increasing again in 2024.
That looks to be about 25% cut off their taxes.
Interesting tidbit: Averaging Alphabet's Q1&Q2 revenue and taxes and then calculating what they would pay at a 25%, 35%, or 21% corporate tax rate I get:
> est_annum_lost_vs_21 => $ 6,057 millions
> est_annum_lost_vs_25 => $12,115 millions
> est_annum_lost_vs_35 => $27,259 millions
So Google alone could be paying about 3.10% (or 6.21-13.97% with 25/35% rates) worth of the proceeds from tariffs just by itself.
Is that a big amount or not isn't clear to me. But it's an interesting perspective to consider.
> You also seem to be conflating investment for profit (GPUs for AI, for example) with income. Capital outlays of this type are almost always financed
True, and my comment over-simplifies all of that. Nevertheless those finance deals effect the debt markets raising the US government's interest rates. It also effects regular home buyers as well who will likely continue seeing higher mortgage rates.
Perhaps, if they were paying more of their fair share of taxes Nvidia, OpenAI + AMD, etc would have both less expected profits in the future and therefore less ability to finance such large amounts.
They're not shelling out the cash now. Given their general profitability and large cash reserves they can leverage even larger amounts of debt than they'd be able to otherwise.
You also seem to be conflating investment for profit (GPUs for AI, for example) with income. Capital outlays of this type are almost always financed (see recently Nvidia, OpenAI + AMD, etc. deals). None of the large players are self-funding AI on that scale right now. This is why OpenAI's burn rate is so catastrophically high.