The U.S. Chamber of Commerce would prefer that you not know that the U.S. corporate tax code leaks revenue like a sieve. Chamber spokesman Martin Regalia complains about the media's and Sens. Carl Levin's (D-MI) and Byron Dorgan's (D-ND) treatment of a recent GAO report on corporate tax avoidance.

The Department of Labor released its weekly unemployment insurance claims data this morning. Initial and continuing claims moved slightly downward, from 445,000 to 432,000 and from 3,379,000 to 3,362,000, respectively. The four-week moving average of initial claims, however, ticked up from 438,500 to 445,750.

I posted on Tuesday this week about a new report from the Government Accountability Office that shows a significant number of corporations are playing fast and loose with their U.S. tax liabilities.

What We Can Say and What We Can't The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report today showing that an average of two-thirds of companies operating in the United States paid no federal corporate income tax from 1998 - 2005. That's right, I said none. Zip. Zero. Nada. The report was requested by Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Carl Levin (D-MI) as a follow up to a similar report GAO did in 2004 in which they found similar levels of tax liability reported on corporate tax returns from 1996 through 2000. In fact, in 2004, GAO found that domestically controlled companies and foreign controlled companies "reported tax liabilities of less than 5 percent of their total income, an estimated 94 percent and 89 percent, respectively, in 2000." Wow. Upwards of 90 percent of companies paid at most 5 percent in federal income taxes in 2000, despite the corporate income tax rate being 35 percent. While you digest that little tidbit (or maybe choke on it), let me tell you about transfer pricing, which is at the heart of these GAO reports and a long time thorn in the side of Sens. Dorgan and Levin, who I guess think corporations should pay taxes.