alt Hacker NewsIn 2025, Meta paid an effective federal tax rate of 3.5%
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As someone who ran his own business for over eight years paying close to 30% tax (and is soon going to do it again), I have very mixed feelings about companies using tricks to reduce their tax burden. I mean, I like it when I do it, and I feel justified because there isn't that much that I can claim tax relief from, but seeing a big company paying such low tax rate feels wrong (even though it may be completely legal).
Having said that, there is something to be said of all the tax that is indirectly being generated by Meta: they pay high salaries, and the people receiving those high salaries will pay a significant amount of income tax. Same for all the dividends that they pay out. Maybe just being a big money-mover is their excuse?
Can someone make a startup that allows me to do this as an individual?
Being pro businesses, it's only available for big corporations because as a self-employed, it's close to 30%.
I wonder if tax returns of corporations could be made public data.
IIUC Meta is spending more on capital (due to AI buildout) than they are receiving in profits.
Given Depreciation this is expected. And ... the intent of the law, to prompt capital investment.
What's the scandal, exactly?
Unless he links directly to evidence that backs up what he says, I’ve learned to tune out Robert Reich.
For a guy who is a Rhodes Scholar, a college professor, and a former Secretary of Labor he has a remarkable tendency to leave out qualifying context when making these statements.
He’s smart enough to formulate arguments with the appropriate context and still make it accessible to the general public - but he consistently chooses not to.
A few weeks ago he was trying to compare the “millionaire tax” of my home state of Massachusetts, with the proposed California wealth tax as evidence that the California tax would not cause flight of wealthy taxpayers:
https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/videos/what-really-happens-...
Never once did he mention that the Massachusetts tax is a bog standard conventional tax on income, compared to this new concept of a global total wealth tax.
Reich is just lying. This isn't a headline and isn't substantiated.
individuals should be able to take advantage of the same tax rules as corporations.
> Trickle-down economics isn't just a hoax, it's corrosive to democracy.
It's a hoax in that it's a straw man that no one advocates for.
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Conventional conservative/capitalist wisdom is that corporations "don't pay taxes" because they just "pass it along to consumers as higher prices". That's why the juxtaposition here, that they are spending tens of millions to influence elections, is important. If corporations were just efficient market operators that moved goods and services, why so much lobbying? It's because the rich owners of corporations realized that with a small tweak, which we know retroactively as "Citizens United vs FEC", they could harness their corporate ownership to control the political, social, and governance landscape of the world.
I sometimes wonder how much net negative for humanity this company is. From the big players probably one of the worst.
It’s starting to feel almost hilarious how much of comically evil villains they are.
I picture them as Robbie Rotten from LazyTown.
Where is this figure coming from? According to Meta's press release, the effective tax rate is 30% [1].
> The full year 2025 provision for income taxes includes the effects of the implementation of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act during the third quarter of 2025. Absent the valuation allowance charge as of the enactment date, our full year 2025 effective tax rate would have decreased by 17 percentage points to 13%, compared to the reported effective tax rate of 30%.
[1]: https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-deta...