Verizon is a multi-billion dollar telecommunications company. They recently bought the enormous Yahoo!, Inc. for around $4 billion. That’s a lot of scratch, unless of course, as Bloomberg reports, the rest of us front the bill with our tax dollars.
Last year’s federal tax overhaul saved the largest U.S. wireless carrier $3.5 billion to $4 billion -- an amount nearly equal to the $4.5 billion it paid for Yahoo in June.
Verizon got a particularly large tax break because almost all of its revenue comes from the U.S. The company is expecting to pay an effective rate of as little as 24 percent this year, down from about 35 percent.
But don’t worry, they are getting back a ton more money this year thanks to the Republican Party, and never fear, that money is going back into making Verizon’s top echelon even wealthier than they already are.
The bulk of the money is going toward “strengthening the balance sheet,” Chief Financial Officer Matt Ellis said in an interview Tuesday. The company announced last month that it planned to buy back $3 billion of its bonds.
Verizon has already proven over time that they love tax breaks and refuse to come close to investing and building the infrastructure and jobs that they promise everybody in order to get those tax breaks. Luckily for them, they have conservative friends who are willing to continue to sell their lies to the public.