Corporations are evading taxes
The majority of US corporations are evading (or at least avoiding) paying their fair share of income taxes:
Two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005, according to a report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
While $2.5 trillion in corporate sales are going untaxed, individual taxpayers are left holding the bag. Out of the $2.4 trillion in federal revenue taken in 2006, less than 15 percent was paid by corporations, while 43 percent was paid by individuals (see Table 1 here).
Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) put it this way:
This report makes clear that too many corporations are using tax trickery to send their profits overseas and avoid paying their fair share in the United States.
Whether corporate tax evasion/avoidance is due to off-shoring of profits or plain old fraud, the end result is the same: individuals are left to subsidize the corporate welfare that the robber barons themselves are not willing to finance.
Sounds like the 1890's all over again.