Major firms report lower cash tax payments after Trump’s July tax law

Since President Trump signed a tax law in July, many large U.S. companies say they are already paying less in cash taxes. Corporations including Walmart, Amazon, Verizon and Eli Lilly disclosed in securities filings that the law will reduce their tax payments in 2025, and AT&T projected it could save as much as $2 billion this year.

The decline is visible in federal receipts: between July and November, corporate income tax revenue fell by roughly a third, or about $52 billion, compared with the same period a year earlier, Treasury data show. The reductions stem not from a change in the statutory corporate rate, which remained at 21 percent, but from a set of provisions that let firms deduct the full cost of investments and research immediately instead of over several years; the law made those provisions permanent and temporarily expanded them to include certain factory construction.

Proponents say the timing changes boost investment by increasing the near-term return on projects. A senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center said such provisions are widely seen as a cost-effective way to incentivize investment, and a team of academic economists estimated the policy could make the economy about 1 percent larger over the long term.

Critics counter that the breaks are expensive—roughly $650 billion over a decade, the article says—and mainly benefit large profitable firms that might have made the same investments without subsidies. Some uncertainty remains.

Key Topics

Business, Trump Tax Law, Corporate Income Tax, Investment Tax Break, Research Deduction, Alternative Minimum Tax