by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News April 17, 2024
Pfizer brought in a whopping $58 billion in revenue in 2023.
So how much did the Big Pharma giant pay in taxes?
Zero dollars and zero cents.
In fact, "Pfizer is expecting a hefty refund!" Jordan Schachtel noted on the April 15 edition of The Dossier.
"Thanks to their scale, size, and taxpayer-funded support system, Pfizer and its peers reap tax benefits that allow for the zeroing out of their tax burden," Schachtel wrote. "Such privileges are not afforded to Main Street businesses, highlighting an incredibly unequal tax code that benefits mega corporations at the expense of the average citizen and small businesses."
But wait, hasn't Joe Biden crowed time and again that his administration has triumphed over Big Pharma and its lobby which spends more money lobbying in Washington, D.C. than any other industry?
In one such 2022 rally, Biden shrieked into the microphone: “we beat Pharma this year! We beat Pharma this year! And it mattered. We’re gonna change people’s lives.”
During his State of the Union address last month, Biden proclaimed: “We finally beat Big Pharma … I also want to end the tax breaks for Big Pharma, Big Oil, private jets, and massive executive pay!”
And when he finished the first commercial might have well said: "This State of the Union address is brought to you by Pfizer."
That Pfizer paid zero in taxes for 2023 "is especially unsavory for American taxpayers, considering the fact that Pfizer’s income over the course of the Covid era was produced via the American and overseas taxpayers themselves," Schachtel pointed out. "Taxpayers subsidized the research and development, approval process, purchasing, and implementation of Pfizer’s junk mRNA product line. The mRNA shots, coupled with the failed Paxlovid oral pill, gave Pfizer an unprecedented windfall, delivering tens of billions in annual profits."
Along with having an extensive overseas tax shelter apparatus, Pfizer also spends tens of millions of dollars every year lobbying lawmakers to manipulate the tax code to their benefit.
"Last year, the pharmaceutical industry as a whole spent over $381 million to employ 1,851 lobbyists in Washington, D.C. And that work has paid major dividends for the mRNA giants," Schachtel noted. ... "Given Pfizer’s zero dollar tax burden, it sure doesn’t seem like Biden 'beat Pharma' after all."
