S&P 100’s overall tax rate inched up in 2020

The overall tax rate paid by the companies in the S&P 100 crept up slightly in 2020, according to a new report, but their average federal tax rate in the U.S. dropped by more than 4 percentage points.

The Corporate Tax Rate Report, from personal finance website WalletHub, looked at the state, federal, U.S. and international tax rates of the 100 companies based on data in their annual reports, and found that their average overall tax rate globally had gone up about one percentage point to around 20%, even as their average federal rate dropped from 18.9% in 2019 to 14.3% in 2020.

The average federal corporate tax rate dropped significantly in 2018, thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which slashed corporate taxes in the U.S., and has remained below 19% since.

The WalletHub report also found that nine companies in the S&P 100 — Wells Fargo, Salesforce.com, AbbVie, Duke Energy, Adobe, Broadcom, IBM, Medtronic and GE — actually paid a negative overall tax rate in 2020. Gilead Sciences, meanwhile, had the highest overall rate, at 94.67%.

Other key findings of the report include:

• The S&P 100 paid U.S. tax rates that were roughly 44% lower than their international tax rates.
• Most of the tech companies in the group paid slightly lower rates abroad, and have done so since 2013.
• The average S&P company paid a tax rate that was 44% lower than that of the top 1% of consumers.