[explodingspleen]

So the economy booms when people don't pay taxes?

[BenLurkin]

1996-2000 were peak years in the decade of greed and corruption known as "THE CLINTOON ERA".

[oceanview]

none of the bubble startup tech companies ever made any money, so they paid no taxes. their founders/executives/employees paid taxes on the value of their stock options, California collected huge revenues and spent it as fast as they could, so when the bubble burst, they went into fiscal shock from the loss of revenues.

[oolatec]

More proof of Clinton's false economy.

[68skylark]

More than 60% of U.S. corporations didn't pay any federal taxes for 1996 through 2000.

Sorry -- my bullsh** detector just went off. This is Jason Blair type reporting.

I know these companies paid millions (or hundreds of millions) in FICA taxes, even if they didn't pay much in income taxes. So the premise of the no-tax story is just some liberal dream -- just stupid.

[b4its2late]

If I'm not mistaken, Bill Clinton was president then and he gave the American taxpayer a retroactive tax increase and it was a fairly large one too..... Balancing the books on the back of the middle class.

[CMailBag]

Corporations NEVER pay taxes. Stockholders and customers pay taxes.

[syriacus]

It's obviously Bush's fault. His tax cuts did this. Retroactively. (He's got a time machine) [/sarcasm]

[Robert A Cook PE]

What "boom" ...

Thought the dnc told us we were in depression ...

Worst since the 1930's, wasn't it?

[familyofman]

Yes, but they're all very patriotic and outsource just as many jobs as they can. You can tell they're patriots - they wear American flags on their 'italian' suit lapels.

[Lakeside]

So? I'm with explodingspleen on this. Lower taxes= booming economy no matter who does/doesn't pay them.

That said, there was much blatant corporation corruption in the Clinton years that authorities turned a blind eye to. With the massive tax increase & to save his own skin Clinton had to keep the numbers up.

[hinckley buzzard]

Sounds pretty shocking until you realize that for the same period of time, the NASDAQ 100 leading tech stocks, taken together, earned exactly zero profit. Cosidering what was happening to their share prices during that period, the tired phrases "internet bubble" and "tech bubble" start to take on some real meaning.

[rebel_yell2]

So totally misleading I don't know where to start. What is a corporation? Any self-employed person who chooses that form of business organization, as well as the 8,000 or so publicly traded corporations. I think that there are more than 5 million "U.S. corporations." Is it surprising that 60% don't pay taxes because they aren't profitable? As a small corporation, you take your profits out as compensation expense to avoid double taxation of dividend income. Notice that this article says NOTHING about the amount of taxes paid. Also, remember that "corporations" don't pay taxes; shareholders pay "corporate" taxes and then pay taxes again on their dividends. If you own any stocks or mutual funds, YOU pay "corporate taxes." </rant off>

[Hank Rearden]

And yet Big Stupid Government still managed to spend craploads of money. Imagine that.

Strangling the taxflow, in any way possible, is the only way to rein in the parasites. Good for corporations to not pay taxes; that means more money in the hands of real people, not parasites.

[zencycler]

Since owners of corporations didn't want to pay the corporate tax on their profits, and then by taxed again when they took the money out of the corporation, many profitable corporations (especially if their not publicly traded) will pay out the profits in salaries before the end of the year. So taxes were paid by the owners of the corporations receiving these salaries, who smartly avoided the double taxation of corporate profits by getting the money out of the corporation before year end.