Where Pay for Chiefs Outstrips U.S. Taxes
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI Published: August 31, 2011
Verizon’s chief, Ivan Seidenberg, earned $18.1 million in 2010; the company got a tax refund.
John Donahoe, eBay’s chief, collected a compensation package over $12 million, while eBay got a $113 million federal refund.
The companies — which include household names like eBay, Boeing, General Electric and Verizon — averaged $1.9 billion each in profits, according to the study by the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal-leaning research group. But a variety of shelters, loopholes and tax reduction strategies allowed the companies to average $304 million each in tax benefits — which can be taken as a refund or used as write-off against earnings in future years.
The chief executives of those companies were paid an average of more than $16 million a year, the study found, a figure substantially higher than the $10.8 million average for all companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index.
