OK, how much US income tax does Exxon-Mobil claim that it actually paid in 2009?
Why are you focusing only on income taxes?
Other taxes were created for this industry that results in lower income left to tax.
It is like claiming you have no money and emptying your right pocket while ignoring the wallet in your left.
...the company’s tax figure for 2009 was heavily influenced by a holdover tax issue from 2008 that was technically recorded on its 2009 books. “ExxonMobil was required to bolster its pension plan by $3 billion when the market went down in 2008,” wrote CAP’s Sima J. Gandhi. “This overpayment reduced the amount of taxes owed in 2008, but the tax adjustment wasn’t made until one year later, which led to an overpayment and the refund in 2009.”
The three-year tax numbers listed on the 10-K do seem to suggest that the company’s 2009 tax bill was unusual. In 2007 and 2008, the equivalent tax totals on the 10-K were $4.5 billion and $3.4 billion, respectively, which suggests that some unusual factor reduced the ExxonMobil tax bill into negative territory for 2009.
While the company is not obligated to publicize its tax return, and thus the actual amount it paid in taxes, ExxonMobil has voluntarily released a figure for its actual federal income tax bill in response to media requests that questioned why the company reported a negative tax liability in 2009. Jeffers told PolitiFact that the “U.S. income tax expense for 2009 activities was approximately $500 million.” The company declined to provide documentation for this number, however.
U.S. income taxes aren’t the only taxes ExxonMobil paid
According to the 10-K, ExxonMobil remitted $6.3 billion in sales taxes, $110 million in state income taxes, and $1.5 billion in “other taxes and duties.” All told, the company’s tax liability according to its 10-K was $7.7 billion. (These numbers are not necessarily totals actually paid but derived using generally accepted accounting principles.) And that only counts taxes paid in the U.S. It paid an additional $70 billion-plus in taxes to foreign governments in 2009, $15 billion of which was for income taxes.