Report: Trump IRS Pick Billy Long Took Nearly $250K From 17 Top Corporate Tax-Avoiders

These Companies Paid Effective Tax Rate of Negative 0.4% On $289 Billion In Profits In Trump Tax Cuts’ First Five Years

Washington D.C. – An Accountable.US review found former U.S. Rep. Billy Long (R-MO), President-elect Trump’s nominee to lead the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), took $248,500 in donations from 17 top tax-avoiding corporations during his career In Congress. These 17 companies – identified in the recent “corporate tax avoidance” report from the Institute on Taxation And Economic Policy (ITEP) — paid a paltry average effective tax rate of negative 0.4% on over $289 billion in collective profits they made in the first five years of the 2017 Trump tax cuts—which Long voted for.

Long’s Nomination a Dream Come True for Corporate Tax Dodgers: Long, a longtime Trump loyalist who is likely to politicize the IRS’s operations, has repeatedly co-sponsored legislation to abolish the IRS and replace the income tax with a regressive sales tax that would burden low- and middle-income families while asking even less of wealthy CEOs. Notably, after Long left Congress in 2023, he “quickly set out to make money” and began enrolling businesses in the Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC), a pandemic-era tax credit that became a “magnet for fraud” that has cost the federal government billions of dollars. A Long-run IRS would likely be among the most welcoming of corporate tax avoidance in U.S. history, which winds up costing working people dearly down the road. 

“There’s no mystery why big corporations that pay relatively nothing under the Trump tax giveaway despite boasting astronomical profits have been so generous to Billy Long,” said Accountable.US Executive Director Tony Carrk. “Long dedicated his time in Congress trying to help tax-dodging corporations pay even less of their fair share while they price-gouged consumers and shipped U.S. jobs overseas. Billy Long personifies the looming Trump agenda: giving greedy corporations a free ride while working people get taken for one.” 

###