Some of the country's wealthiest corporations are calculating they owe far less to the Internal Revenue Service as a result of President Donald Trump's overhauled Tax Code, underscoring how a law billed as a middle‑class cut also turned out to be a big win for Corporate America.
Nearly a dozen of the 50 biggest US-listed companies attributed a drop in federal cash income taxes last year as a direct result of Trump's $3.4 trillion sweeping tax law, according to a Bloomberg analysis of regulatory filings. In all, annual corporate tax revenues dropped by $65 billion following the law's passage.
There's a clear pattern emerging of sectors that stand to win the most from the deductions and special preferences tucked into Trump's "Big, Beautiful" tax law. Those include companies across multiple industries: Big Tech, retailers, drugmakers, manufacturers and telecom giants.
Many more companies disclosed lower tax payments without attributing them to Trump's law or said they expect to collect benefits in future years.
Amazon.com Inc. was among the clearest winners in the wake of the new tax law, owing $2.8 billion in federal cash income taxes in 2025 — down from more than $7 billion in the two preceding years — despite reporting higher US revenue last year. The company said in an annual regulatory filing the law "significantly decreased" the company's cash taxes last year and expects it to again in 2026.
Eli Lilly & Co., the pharmaceutical giant behind the popular weight loss injectable Zepbound, paid about $500 million less in federal cash income taxes last year despite a roughly $13 billion increase in US-based income, according to an annual regulatory filing. RTX Corp., the aerospace and defense company, said in a July earnings call the "headwinds from tariffs" would be offset by lower federal cash taxes.
The US Treasury Department's corporate tax revenues dropped to $424 billion last year, down from $489 billion in 2024, according to government data. Brandon Pizzola, an economist at Big Four firm EY, said the law delivered a roughly 15% tax cut to Corporate America, based on expected 2025 revenue before its passage.
Determining the impact of the tax law on a company-by-company basis can be tricky because a business' tax burden can fluctuate based on many variables regardless of federal taxes changes, including their annual revenue, investments and available deductions, not all of which may be disclosed in regulatory documents.
"The more you drill down, the more noise you get," said Garrett Watson, director of policy analysis for the right-leaning Tax Foundation, including timing of a company's investments, their existing tax exposure and how that interacts with retroactive benefits, and in some cases, a 15% minimum tax.
Still, Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said early signs of the substantial tax cut for corporations are starting to emerge.
"The very clear trend is that so far we're seeing corporate effective tax rates that are as low as anything my organization has measured in the last 40 years," Gardner said. The think tank has compiled a
Speed deductions
Last year's tax law left the 21% corporate tax rate in place, but lesser-known Tax Code perks allowed companies to speed up the deduction for domestic research and development investments, a well as the cost of purchasing tools, machinery, equipment, office furniture, computers and more, known in tax circles as "bonus depreciation."
The accelerated write-offs were particularly beneficial for research- or capital-intensive industries, including tech and telecommunications, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing.
Federal cash tax payments from Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. dropped by roughly half in 2025, which the companies attributed in part to the new tax law. Verizon in a July earnings call said it expected a $1.5 billion to $2 billion tax benefit from the law in 2025 and "significant" savings this year. AT&T in a January earnings call said the company expects to cash taxes to remain around $1 billion to $1.5 billion through 2028, on par with last year.
In addition to Amazon, tech giants Meta Platforms, Inc. and Palantir Technologies Inc. in annual filings disclosed they will benefit from the accelerated and catchup R&D deduction. Meta's total cash taxes dropped to $7.6 billion in 2025 from $10.6 billion in 2024, as the company recognized "significant cash tax savings," thanks to the law.
Pharmaceutical company AbbVie Inc. said in an annual regulatory filing the new tax law had a "favorable impact" on cash payments, which totaled $3.6 billion across jurisdictions in 2025 compared to $4.1 billion the year before.
Chain retailers Home Depot Inc. and Walmart Inc. also said Trump's OBBBA lowered their cash tax payments in annual regulatory filings.
EY's Pizzola said those accelerated deductions, coupled with a more generous write-offs for loan interest payments, were responsible for 90% of the corporate tax breaks delivered last year by Trump's budget law.
Because the law sped up deductions companies otherwise would have claimed over a longer period, the tax breaks are expected to be most pronounced in the years immediately following the law's 2025 passage and taper off over time.
"You see larger upfront costs," Tax Foundation's Watson said. "And then that cost drops over time as the timing of these deductions play out."
Mixed results
For some, the impact of the new law was mixed or negative, as the accelerated deductions delivered savings up front, sometimes to the detriment of future tax benefits. The result was a spike to tax expense on paper, though not necessarily an increase in the taxes the company paid last year.
International Business Machines Corp. said it took a roughly $300 million hit on paper, as the new law prompted the company to reevaluate its future tax position. Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which produces semiconductor products, said in a filing the accelerated R&D deduction reduced its current income tax liability, but also decreased its eligibility for future tax benefits on foreign income.
In some cases, the result was an increase to the company's "book tax" expense, an accounting measure that includes both current and deferred taxes, which didn't necessarily result in the business owing more to the IRS for 2025.
Johnson & Johnson paid less in federal cash taxes, but its effective tax rate jumped 2% when the company took a $1 billion hit as the new law reduced the value of future tax breaks tied to foreign subsidiaries, according to a regulatory filing. Caterpillar Inc., a construction and mining equipment manufacturer, in an October earnings call disclosed a drop in cash taxes paid to the federal government, even as its effective tax rate, based on book tax, increased.
Still, Gardner said on the whole corporations are likely to come out on top.
"Last year's tax bill narrows the tax base a lot more, so this shouldn't be a surprise," he said. "If filing season ended right now, we'd have the lowest effective corporate tax rates overall that I've ever seen."
