In 2025, Meta paid an effective federal tax rate of 3.5% — its lowest on record. Meanwhile, Meta is pumping $65 million into elections this year to boost AI friendly candidates. Trickle-down economics…
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In 2025, Meta paid an effective federal tax rate of 3.5% — its lowest on record. Meanwhile, Meta is pumping $65 million into elections this year to boost AI friendly candidates. Trickle-down economics isn't just a hoax, it's corrosive to democracy. Big Money is the root of our dysfunction.
2026-02-25T23:30:12.954Z
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By shubhamjain 2026-02-2615:518 reply Where is this figure coming from? According to Meta's press release, the effective tax rate is 30% [1].
> The full year 2025 provision for income taxes includes the effects of the implementation of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act during the third quarter of 2025. Absent the valuation allowance charge as of the enactment date, our full year 2025 effective tax rate would have decreased by 17 percentage points to 13%, compared to the reported effective tax rate of 30%.
[1]: https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-deta...
By TYPE_FASTER 2026-02-2618:471 reply The effective federal tax rate, and the amount of federal tax Meta paid as a percentage of income, are two different things.
More details here: https://itep.org/meta-tax-breaks-trump-mark-zuckerberg/
The 10-K filed by Meta is linked to in that article, and can be found here: https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/0001...
If you dig into the details in the Income Tax Disclosure block, Meta paid $2.8B in Federal income taxes for the year ended December 31, 2025.
Meta deferred a large chunk of Federal income taxes.
So, while the effective Federal income tax rate for 2025 was about 30%, largely due to a 3rd quarter charge of $14B against deferred taxes (Meta's effective tax rate for 2023 was 17.6% and for 2024 it was 11.8%), they paid 3.5% of their income as Federal income tax.
>Meta deferred a large chunk of Federal income taxes.
How are can we reasonably expect them to be deferred for? Are we talking on the order of years, or decades?
By mcbrit 2026-02-272:35 A tax deferred is a tax avoided. (common wisdom)
By dahinds 2026-02-2619:43 Mostly never -- most of the deferral was an accounting adjustment for the value of future tax credits that they could no longer take advantage of, so there is no actual tax liability here that will eventually be paid.
I bet the two sources won't agree on what values go into the denominator and / or numerator of their effective tax rate calculations. It can be as simple as the 3.5% being a calculated rate on revenue rather than profit
You can't just throw revenue in the denominator, though. Business tax is assessed on income. If you're going to make a claim about tax rate using an unconventional metric, you need to be explicit about what you've done; Reich isn't.
If you're Robert Reich, you can! You can make up anything, and someone will submit it to HN to waste everyone's time!
By Refreeze5224 2026-02-2617:412 reply Yeah, screw Robert Reich! Always looking out for the workers who make up the majority of this country. Why won't he look out for the poor multi-national corporations, who have no one to advocate for them or their tax rates?
By loeg 2026-02-2618:25 Hey, he can advocate for whatever causes he likes. I just think honesty makes a more compelling argument than lies.
> Always looking out for the workers
How is spreading misinformation looking out for the workers?
By bryan_w 2026-02-277:52 If anything it hurts the workers because now people won't listen to him anymore
By MichaelZuo 2026-02-2616:561 reply I thought there were systems designed to effectively negate users that submit too many misleading posts.
By latexr 2026-02-2618:03 Your parent post isn’t suggesting it’s always the same user submitting, just that users submit a lot of posts from this person.
Can’t say I agree, though. I don’t recall ever having seen one of his posts on HN, and a cursory search suggests they’re not even upvoted that much. Highest I found was under 30 points. But my methodology is flawed, as I basically searched for the name.
By samrus 2026-02-285:50 It was income you dicks. Someone above crunched the numbers. Why do you hate rob reich so much your willing to make shit up and get mad at him about it?
By TrainedMonkey 2026-02-2617:28 Sure, and there are a ton of ways to shifting income around. For example selling a subsidiary in lower tax jurisdiction patents and then paying for their usage. Another example is Hollywood accounting where productions pay exorbitant rates for equipment and catering to affiliated companies. This inflates the costs so the movies end up unprofitable despite smashing box office.
Income != profit. Income is revenue. It sure would be nice if businesses were taxed on income, given that’s how people are taxed and all. Aren’t corporations supposedly people now thanks to citizens united?
You're mistaken. Income is net of expenses. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/122214/what-differe...
By pinkmuffinere 2026-02-2616:59 I appreciate your polite corrections with well sourced info! Being a bit silly, I’ll say you’re a shiny beam of knowledge in a dark expanse of confusion
By quietbritishjim 2026-02-2616:283 reply > Business tax is assessed on income.
Income (in a business) is another word for revenue. I think you meant: business tax is assessed on profit.
In the U.S. income is defined as revenue minus expenses:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_(United_States_legal_de...
By quietbritishjim 2026-02-270:13 Interesting, it seems like this might be a UK vs US thing. All the non-dodgy UK results for "income" I found agree with what I thought e.g. "Income less Costs = Profit" [1]
The one exception is HMRC (UK equivalent of IRS) which, for the purposes of corporation tax only, defines income like profit [2] (with some technical differences, but the same spirit). But for other purposes (e.g. personal income tax) even they use it to just literally mean cash received without subtracting off outgoings.
Using it in this net sense seems very odd to me, but maybe that's because I'm British. "Income" and "outgoings" look to me like symmetrical terms, and no one would consider outgoings to be after subtracting off money coming in (would they?!)
[1] https://www.cheapaccounting.co.uk/blog/index.php/income-prof...
[2] https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/company-taxation-ma...
No, my usage was correct and unambiguous. Describing income as revenue is incorrect. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/122214/what-differe...
By quietbritishjim 2026-02-270:591 reply That page says that "net income" message the sense you meant it and "gross income" means the sense I understood it.
It does say that unqualified "income" means the net version but it's a push to say that makes it unambiguous. (And, at I said on a sibling comment, this seems to be a US convention.)
By loeg 2026-02-272:26 Meta is a US company and Reich is a US citizen offering commentary on US domestic policy. "Income" is unambiguously net income in the US.
By beezle 2026-02-2616:55 This is incorrect as anyone who has looked at a financial statement or taken a first level accounting class will know - Revenue is the top line, the gross income and lastly net income, the two reflecting the removal of various costs/expenses as per GAAP.
By terminalshort 2026-02-2616:59 There is no real concept of sources legitimately disagreeing here. There is tax law, which Meta uses to calculate its tax liability, and then there are lies.
By kccqzy 2026-02-2617:13 Even if you mistakenly calculate the rate on revenue, you will get 25474/200966=13%.
I think it's from this: https://itep.org/meta-tax-breaks-trump-mark-zuckerberg/
By shubhamjain 2026-02-2616:072 reply The post seems to be comparing quarterly figures for tax with annual profit. The doc they cite clearly $25B as provision for income tax.
By TYPE_FASTER 2026-02-2618:57 While they provisioned $25B, the 10-K Meta filed states they paid $2.8B in Federal income taxes for the full year 2025. The amount they provisioned is not limited to Federal income taxes, it also includes state and foreign income taxes.
By abeppu 2026-02-2616:54 I am not an accountant or finance professional but the table they refer to has the 2.8B under "current" and the 25B figure under "total". Is it just that of their 2025 taxes, they paid 2.8B during that calendar year and it's only Feb and the remaining was not yet actually paid out at the time that filing was prepared?
By datsci_est_2015 2026-02-2616:071 reply Interesting. Wouldn’t surprise me if there are different ways to report the same numbers to make the situation seem more or less favorable. Statisticians and accountants are both professional liars (speaking as a statistician married to an accountant).
> Wouldn’t surprise me if there are different ways to report the same numbers to make the situation seem more or less favorable.
Yeah -- accurately, and inaccurately.
By datsci_est_2015 2026-02-2618:201 reply Are you implying that there are four quadrants:
Or are you implying that Meta spoke the God’s honest truth out of a sense of societal duty and honor.- Accurate / favorable - Inaccurate / favorable - Accurate / unfavorable - Inaccurate / unfavorableBy loeg 2026-02-2618:28 In this instance, only two combinations -- accurate and favorable vs inaccurate and unfavorable.
Meta and Meta's accountants spoke the truth in their audited financial statements. I cannot speak to the motivation in their hearts, but I am aware that there are significant financial and criminal consequences to publishing incorrect financial statements.
By philipallstar 2026-02-2616:33 Can the post be community noted?
By DoctorOetker 2026-02-2616:571 reply If entity A declares such and such incomes and expenses, it could be truthful or not.
If entity A is truthfully declaring such and such incomes and expenses, why would it reference it's own declaration as the "reported effective tax rate of 30%".
On the other hand if A is not truthfully declaring such and such incomes and expenses, and a legal team is very careful in maintaining an exact wording towards the government, then any tax-related comments by A which are not made by the legal team would either be self-censored or censored by the legal team to never reference "the effective tax rate" but rather a "reported" one, it basically reads like a superscript referring the reader to some other carefully worded fine print in other documents.
What prevented the more natural language of "[...] compared to the effective tax rate of 30%." ? Under what circumstances would you add such a word?
EDIT: this is not to say that this word constitutes an effective admission of lying, but rather that they don't actually want to talk about it, while pretending to be openly talking about it.
EDIT2: whenever companies get away with substantially lower tax rates, employee shortages in the rest of the economy can be seen as low-effective-taxed companies "stealing" employees from the rest of the economy, perhaps with or without approval from the government. If the government approves it is effectively a state-sponsored enterprise, and if it doesn't it would probably like to know about it since productivity of the economy could be improved by reassigning those employees into companies that allow themselves to be properly taxed (whatever that means!)
By SpicyLemonZest 2026-02-2617:09 In the US, public companies generally must report their financial results according to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). They can also report other numbers, and that's what they're doing in footnote (1); they think one particular adjustment GAAP requires them to make might be misleading, and they helpfully disclose that they would have calculated 13% if not for that adjustment. But they are not allowed to say that the GAAP number is wrong or untruthful, nor to put the non-GAAP number in the topline and the GAAP adjustment in the footnote.
By datsci_est_2015 2026-02-2616:05 Yeah this is a weird low quality submission to HN (no offense OP). Microblogging has questionable value for anything beyond “hot takes” and “breaking news” (and keeping people angry and misinformed enough to vote).
I'm shocked, absolutely shocked that a Bluesky post would be deliberately misleading to push a narrative that we need more taxes.
I don't know why that's specific to one social media network. I see deliberately misleading posts on all of them.
By akramachamarei 2026-02-2617:44 Sure, but being misleading to push for more taxes is more characteristic of Bluesky than many others.
By randomtoast 2026-02-2616:012 reply That's why I often ask for "Source?" — because sometimes people seem to make up numbers. However, whenever I do this, I receive a large number of downvotes. Maybe it's not common on HN to back up claims with sources.
There is another possibility. “Source?” is a low effort comment, but GP’s is not.
By oskarkk 2026-02-2620:37 IMO putting an important number in your post/comment, and not providing a source for that number, is also kind of low effort. If you verified the number before writing, you already had the source ready and you could just put it in the comment. If you wrote the number from memory, not checking if your memory is correct is low effort (but you can also warn the readers that the number is from memory, that's better). If you're intentionally misrepresenting what the number means in your comment (and giving the source would contradict the meaning of your comment), or just giving a number that "feels right" or a number that you know is wrong, then it's low effort and a lie.
I try to verify important numbers and facts in what I read, and seriously, there's so much fake or misrepresented info everywhere, on every political side, that it's depressing, and it makes me don't believe literally anything without a source, unless I verify it myself. Of course when someone provides a source, I often look into the source, and sometimes it turns out that the text misinterpreted/misrepresented the meaning of the source. On Wikipedia, I also check if what is written is actually in the source, because sometimes the editor writes his own opinion while only loosely basing the text on a source (or basing it on nothing).
Verification can take some time, and that's the effort passed from the author of unsourced claim to its many readers, unless they just trust it or ignore the claim.
When I write anything I try to include sources for important things. If I wouldn't include a source, and someone asked "Source?" I wouldn't think "what an annoying guy", I'd think "oh, I could have linked that in the first place". And I usually upvote "Source?" comments (unless it's a thing that anyone can check in 30 seconds). I usually double-check the facts in what I'm writing, and many times I almost wrote something from memory that wasn't true, but looking for a source saved me from that.
By randomtoast 2026-02-2616:063 reply [flagged]
By jonas21 2026-02-2616:19 This is also a low effort comment, despite the word count.
In contrast, shubhamjain found Meta's earnings release for the specified time period, quoted numbers that appear to contradict the claim, and provided a link to the release. This adds to the conversation, while a comment that says "Source?" or a few paragraphs that can be reduced to "Source?" do not.
By rohin15 2026-02-2616:14 What benefit do you gain by having an llm write comments on HN? I don't get it.
By koakuma-chan 2026-02-2616:08 Too brief, minus 10 marks.
It's more likely your attitude rather than your quest for verification that gets you downvotes.
By randomtoast 2026-02-2616:041 reply My intentions are sincere, maybe it is the wording.
I would imagine it's more you're being skeptical of something that is unpopular to be skeptical about. It's like someone saying climate change is impacting our planet, and then asking "source?" in response.
By randomtoast 2026-02-2616:18 No, that's not correct. I ask "Source?" when someone makes a claim that goes against popular belief, such as: "climate change is not impacting our planet." I do think "Source?" is generally considered a low-effort response, so it's the wording I guess, not the context.
Except he was skeptical about Meta's effective tax rate being 3%. Why are you making up scenarios that aren't real to justify hurting him?
The user you're defending (randomtoast)[1] isn't the one who expressed skepticism about the 3% claim (shubhamjain)[2].
By kolbe 2026-02-2716:54 But it's the topic he brought this up in.
By brynnbee 2026-02-2823:03 He was asking about the trend of him commenting with "Source?" leading to downvotes on other posts. I was giving an extreme example to represent why that may be happening elsewhere. I agree that in this case with the 3% rate it's likely not applicable.
By terminalshort 2026-02-2616:581 reply Taxes are a subject of frequent liberal conspiracy theories. You will see all sorts of blatantly false claims like this because left wing misinformation spreaders like Robert Reich make up their own tax calculations that have no relation whatsoever to actual tax law.
By mrgoldenbrown 2026-02-2617:181 reply No need to limit this to "liberal" conspiracy theories. Trump and his admin's statements on how tariffs and other taxes work and who pays them have been full of blatantly false claims.
By akramachamarei 2026-02-2618:111 reply "X does A" does not mean "only X does A."
By datsci_est_2015 2026-02-2618:241 reply It’s a fair retort here, though, where the grandparent comment was clearly trying to grandstand in opposition to his perceived enemy tribe, mostly unprovoked.
Edit: in other words, it’s a fair interpretation of the comment to be saying “We wouldn’t have to deal with all this misinformation about taxes if there wasn’t some giant liberal conspiracy”, given that they weren’t replying to any specific part of the parent post.
By akramachamarei 2026-02-2620:221 reply Well, no, that is not a reasonable interpretation at all. For one, the commenter did not proclaim existence of conspiracies, but the existence of conspiracy theories. People mix these up a lot. Secondly, the other interpretation you propose exhibits roughly the same form as "X does A", so it's worth repeating that it does not mean "only X does A" either!
By datsci_est_2015 2026-03-0115:01 Context matters. Arguments don’t live in a pedantic vacuum.
By youknownothing 2026-02-2615:576 reply As someone who ran his own business for over eight years paying close to 30% tax (and is soon going to do it again), I have very mixed feelings about companies using tricks to reduce their tax burden. I mean, I like it when I do it, and I feel justified because there isn't that much that I can claim tax relief from, but seeing a big company paying such low tax rate feels wrong (even though it may be completely legal).
Having said that, there is something to be said of all the tax that is indirectly being generated by Meta: they pay high salaries, and the people receiving those high salaries will pay a significant amount of income tax. Same for all the dividends that they pay out. Maybe just being a big money-mover is their excuse?
By latexr 2026-02-2618:14 > Having said that, there is something to be said of all the tax that is indirectly being generated by Meta: they pay high salaries, and the people receiving those high salaries will pay a significant amount of income tax.
So a few people at the top who have more money than Lucifer himself keep getting richer until they are richer than God, and the people at the bottom take on the burden. How is that a fair or good system?
Here’s a better one: Raise taxes on large corporations and obscenely rich individuals and lower them for the people on the bottom. Then Meta can pay lower salaries, but the people getting them will still be able to keep as much or more as before. Meanwhile Meta gets less money to spend around destroying democracy, and tax revenue increases for the government who can spend them to better the lives of every citizen.
Wouldn’t that be preferable?
Let’s ignore for a moment the current bonkers situation in the US, where more tax revenue would only mean more money to be stolen from the people to enrich one guy and his circle of close friends. Hey, like Meta is doing!
By varispeed 2026-02-2617:50 Big corporations don't pay taxes the same way as regular folks' businesses. Here in the UK the tax rates are _negotiated_ for the big guys. The system is entirely opaque and invites corruption.
By tossandthrow 2026-02-2616:011 reply It is easy to excuse paying taxes.
The issue that that taxes fundamentally bind two moralities: and individual and social one.
Societies generally thrive better when there is a certain level of equality. Not a hundred percent, but enough for social mobility and for people to be aspirational.
No or low taxes remove that opportunity. It bears people from taking an education and forces them in poverty.
Progressive taxation on income is specifically designed to prevent upward mobility from working.
By Refreeze5224 2026-02-2617:44 This is totally true, if you ignore the entire history of taxation in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries.
By tossandthrow 2026-02-2616:41 Taxes are a part of a broader redistributive system.
Mobility is given by ensuring that all have equal opportunity. Opportunity to learn, opportunity to start a business. Etc.
By overrun11 2026-02-2617:24 21% has been the highest possible corporate tax rate since 2017. It's not really fair to compare what Meta pays now to what you paid under an entirely different tax regime. You would also pay less in taxes running your business today than you did previously.
By jeromechoo 2026-02-2616:14 The dilemma we're battling with here is the morality of avoiding most of your taxes if you can afford to hire the right people to manage your money.
Would it still be justified if we replaced "taxes" with "judgement in the afterlife"?
By thinkingtoilet 2026-02-2616:092 reply You're acting like the game is fair. The game is heavily rigged to favor large companies. This is by design.
By overrun11 2026-02-2617:27 Most small businesses are pass through entities in the United States and pay no corporate taxes at all so it's certainly not the case that "The game is heavily rigged to favor large companies."
By philipallstar 2026-02-2616:311 reply Meta is a company created in the last 20 years or so. You can make more big companies if you don't make it really difficult to do so.
By arcticfox 2026-02-2616:56 "Why don't most people simply create billion-dollar companies so they can also benefit from tax benefits you can only capture at scale? As long as we make it easy to create billion-dollar companies this should work."
Can someone make a startup that allows me to do this as an individual?
By loeg 2026-02-2616:02 Join Bluesky and you too can lie about whatever you want.
By swiftcoder 2026-02-2617:031 reply It's called a "farm" (note the quotes). You may need a few acres of very cheap rural land, and some chickens. The IRS loves chickens
By xnx 2026-02-2617:11 > The IRS loves chickens
Or even just bees: https://mountainsweethoney.com/state-guide-for-beekeeper-tax...
By candiddevmike 2026-02-2615:432 reply Join that startup as a founder, have a million+ exit and you will have the capability to do this as an individual.
By yoyohello13 2026-02-2615:511 reply Good life advice in general really.
By palmotea 2026-02-2615:57 Don't know why so many people are so stupid they don't follow such simple and sensible advice. /s
By draw_down 2026-02-2615:51 [dead]
By havefunbesafe 2026-02-2616:04 Effective exit rate tax is around 24%
By wang_li 2026-02-2616:27 You don't need a startup. Millions of people have an effective tax rate that is 0% and they have a net tax rate that is negative. They do this simply by having no meaningful skills or knowledge.
Individual Meta employees and shareholders couldn't do this either.
By terminalshort 2026-02-2617:02 But they can. Any Meta employee or shareholder is also free to go on Bluesky and tell lies about taxes.
By TiredOfLife 2026-02-2616:43 You can make stuff up even on this site.
