Other than "reversal". For 20 big Americans, with profits ranging from 13 million to 2 billion dollars, the relationship with the US treasury can best be summed up in one figure: zero. This is the amount - so to speak - of the taxes paid in the second quarter of 2014 by about twenty companies listed on the S&P 500, according to an analysis by the USA Today newspaper. Evasion? No: an increasingly dense system of loopholes to lighten the tax burden on the income generated. Up to the paradox of a rate that drops to 0% or even translates into a tax credit to be claimed from the Internal Revenue Service (the IRS, the American revenue agency).

From engines to pharmaceuticals In the list drawn up by USA Today, impressive names from the American industrial sector stand out. All "profitable", with an accumulation of untaxed profits that adds to the 2,000 billion parked abroad. This is the case of General Motors (profits of 278 million dollars in the second quarter of the current year), of the bio-technology multinational Thermo Fisher (278.5 million dollars), of the Seagate group (320 million) and of Pharmaceutical giant Merck, better known outside North America as Merck Sharp & Dohme: Profits over $2 billion in year-to-date second-quarter balance sheet, up over $1 billion from $906 million in the same period last. Discounts are nothing new. But how is it possible that not even a penny is deposited in the state coffers?

Satisfied and refunded The case of Merck itself is exemplary. The multinational, which closed the second quarter with revenues rising by 52%, attributes the super relief to the "beneficial impact" of revenues generated on foreign markets and, therefore, not subject to US income tax which applies only to reported funds at home. Bernie Sanders, a Democratic senator from Vermount who had already noticed this in 2012, estimated the loss generated in his “Top 10 of corporate tax avoiders”: “Merck allocated 53, $4 billion in offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes. If the practice were banned by law, he would have had to pay $18.69 billion to the tax authorities." But that is not all. Also between March and June, the company also benefited from the tax relief associated with an agreement with AstraZeneca's rivals, bringing the rate negative: now Merck could avail itself of a tax credit with the tax authorities, as has already happened in the past. Senator Berns explains it again: “In 2009 Merck not only did not pay any income tax, but received a 55 million dollar refund from the IRS. Even though it had made more than $5.7 billion in profits in the United States."

Seagate, a giant in the production of hard drives with offices in Cupertino (California) and tax domicile established first in the tax haven of the Cayman Islands and then in Ireland, where the corporate tax is over 20% lighter than the American one, is equally well versed in the matter (12.5% versus 35%). The company, profits of 320 million dollars in the last quarter, managed to double the benefits from the 7 million "discount" obtained in 2013 to 14 million untaxed in the fiscal year that closed last June 27th. When asked, the two companies reiterated what the "magnificent 20" on the USA Today list have declared or could declare: there is nothing illegal, because the avoidance tactics follow loopholes opened up by the system itself.