Some US companies paid higher CEO salaries than taxes in 2011

Looking for another reason to despise corporations and their overpaid CEOs? You might want to sit down for this. In 2011, 26 of the biggest companies in America paid more to their chief executives than they did in federal taxes, thanks to tax breaks on things like previous losses and depreciating assets. The study, performed by the Institute for Policy Studies, found Citigroup, for instance, got a $144 million tax refund and paid its CEO $14.9 million. AT&T, which got a $420 million refund, paid its top exec $18.7 million. Several companies took exception to the study, noting that all the refunds were legal and that they had, in fact, paid hundreds of millions in taxes in previous years. [Source]

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