Want to feel like a real frontiersman? Are you tired of being oppressed by “The Man”? Do you not even know who “The Man” is referring to? Then you gotta live off the grid! It’s like being a pioneer, only with the Internet and packets of instant Starbucks. It’s a lot of work, but here are 10 reasons it’s awesome.

No Junk Mail

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Companies can’t mail you crap if you don’t have a registered address. So what if the mailman can’t find you? UPS and FedEx goes anywhere you pay ‘em to. No more circulars, phony timeshare offers or “Urgent News! Must Open!” Salesmen coming to your door? Not a chance! And you’ll never have to look your neighbor’s kid in the eye again and refuse to buy band candy or girl scout cookies.

You’ll Always Be in Fashion

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Making your own clothes out in the middle of nowhere means never having to apologize for how you dress. Hell, why even wear pants? It’s not like you’ll be living near anyone. If you are, it’ll probably be in a small community where the rules of fashion are either uncared for or invented anew.

If the Apocalypse Comes, You Won’t Notice

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Let the Rapture scoop up all the Christians. Let nuclear war or the zombies rape the cities of New York and Los Angeles. While civilization goes down like a bitch, you’ll be comfortable and warm out in the middle of nowhere. And once the dust settles and word reaches you of the primitive, radioactive Hellscape, you can return to rule the mutants, being the last person alive to know how to properly stoke a kiln. Class wars, riots, and any kind of societal uprising/turmoil will no longer concern or effect you. Living off the grid can give you a feeling of safety that all the laws in the world cannot.

No Utility Bills

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Before the first plumbers and his butt crack, God just left water everywhere in these things called “streams” and “creeks” and “rivers”. With a little practice, a fire and a pot, you can make clean drinking water for free. You’ll probably even be able to build a system of pipes that can deliver water straight into your home. Need some electricity to fire up your laptop? Once you master how to hook up a generator to a standing bicycle, you’ll get exercise and all the porn you need to survive. And solar panels get better and better every year; what’s better than getting free energy from the sun? Just be wary that evil corporations may try to infringe on your land and force you to pay for energy from their company. One man, William Williams, faces multiple penalties and fines for cutting down utility lines — that the company planted on his private land!!

The Cops Can’t Find You

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Living off the grid is especially handy if you also happen to be living a criminal lifestyle. In today’s police state, it’s becoming increasingly harder to obey the law because it infringes on personal lifestyle choices that are irrelevant to the rest of the world. If you’re tired of constantly looking over your back just because you smoke pot, refuse to go to jury duty, don’t want to pay outrageous parking tickets or simply enjoy being naked in your own home, living off the grid may be the right choice for you. Let’s face it, when civilization collapses, it’s probably wise to be somewhere where the last guys with guns can’t find you.

The Law Becomes Very Murky

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When the cops can’t find you, you can pretty much make up your own rules. It’s kind of like floating in international waters, but without the bad Cruise food and second rate entertainment.

No Insurance Payments

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If the mail and the cops can’t find you, neither can your insurance company. In fact, why have one? If you get severely injured, you’re just going to die anyways. No sense paying $500 a month so the EMT’s can’t find you. On the up side, if you can build a car or some kind of post apocalyptic facsimile, you can drive it however you want. Helmet, no helmet, seat belt, no seatbelt, brakes, no brakes, on fire, not on fire, it’s all up to you. Just keep in mind that showing up at the hospital without health insurance may be worse than not going at all — oftentimes, the doctors will literally just let you die.

Your Food is Free

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The woods is like an all-you-can-eat buffet. The food is fresh if you can catch it and you’ll never have to deal with a snooty waiter ever again. If you like salted, smoky meat, off the grid cuisine is right up your alley. At no point will your wife turn to you and say, “Honey, you’d better not eat that, your cholesterol.” She’ll more likely say, “Give me that meat! I haven’t eaten for three days!” Honing your farming skills before moving off the grid is a good idea; you will then be able to harvest your own (completely organic, chemical and modification free) food — which is an incredibly useful skill to have, especially if the rest of the world is plunged into another depression. Growing and catching your own food is also incredibly less wasteful than buying products with unnecessary amounts of paper, plastic, and metal packaging.

Your House is Free

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If you can build it, you can live in it. The United States is actually a big empty place and Montana has less than seven people per square mile. For a mere couple of thousand dollars of wood and your labor, you can build a house that is at least as good as anyone else’s. You won’t be close to a Starbucks or a Wendy’s, but hey, at least you won’t be near a Starbucks or a Wendy’s.

Lower Taxes

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Think about all the money you’ve ever paid for taxes. Now imagine that it’s all back in your pocket right now. That’s how much you could have if you live off the grid. What “the Man” can’t find, the Man can’t tax. And with an overhead as low as yours, a $30,000/year gig means you’ll probably have close to $30,000 at the end of that year. If only someone had told Wesley Snipes sooner. This, however, is fraud. The taxes on an off-grid house, though, are significantly less than on any other house.

There’s been a lot of media-driven furor this year around the issue of humongous corporations weaseling their way out of paying taxes, with GE taking a brunt of the public assault. While with each passing month we hear of some new offender, one wonders how it is that these companies are actually able to do it. This infographic from Online MBA breaks down the factory-line process by which corporations ingeniously – and, most say, unethically – minimize their taxes.

[Source: onlinemba.com]

They say that the only constants in life are death and taxes. Yet while attempts to evade the Grim Reaper have so far proven to be ultimately unsuccessful, this hasn’t stopped people trying to get out of their debt to the government. There are a wealth of loopholes and accounting tricks with which a savvy individual can minimize their payment to the IRS, but for some people that’s still far too much to pay.

However, high profile tax evaders don’t always manage to escape to the Cayman Islands to grow old with their tightly grasped dollars; indeed, the IRS has managed to claw back some of the dollars owed to it. What’s more, those caught dodging the charges they’re obliged to pay can, sometimes at least, face stiff penalties as a result of their transgressions. Here are 10 infamous tax evaders who didn’t slip through the net.

10. Dennis Kozlowski

In May 2006, Dennis Kozlowski was ordered to repay $21.2m in owed New York sales taxes. The tax had been dodged on 12 paintings, including a Monet, a Renoir and a Bouguereau. Added to this charge were several other scandals relating to his former company, Tyco, including $81m in unauthorized bonuses. Kozlowski had reportedly liked to throw his money around; he bragged of his shower curtain costing $6,000. However, 8.5-25 years in prison was a bonus he wasn’t expecting.

9. Steve Rubell

After publicly commenting that his prominent New York Disco, Studio 54, was only outmatched in profits by the Mafia, Steve Rubell drew considerable attention from the Feds. Comparing his income to that of the world’s most prominent criminal organization was probably not the wisest move. After a raid on the club, Rubell and his associate were charged with tax evasion to the tune of $2.5m in unreported earnings. Heavy fines and a 42 month jail term were handed out. I guess the judge felt unable to just blame it on the boogie.

8. Joe Francis

Joe Francis, creator of the ‘Girls Gone Wild’ brand, has a strangely drooping face that carries an arrest-worthy suggestion of sleaze; but it was on his tax return that the law caught up with him. Accused of filing over $20m in fabricated business deductions on corporate tax returns, Francis pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns as well as bribing Nevada jail workers in 2009. He was ordered to pay fines totaling $250,000 in addition to racking up jail time. ‘Girls Gone Wild’ may have been a financial success, but ‘Calculators Gone Wild,’ in the end, proved a terrible investment.

7. Edward and Elaine Brown

Believing that the world was locked in a conflict between God and the secretive Illuminati-backed US government, Elaine and Edward Brown felt quite justified in not paying tax, and indeed going to great lengths not to. Bolstered by the material support of sympathizers, the couple locked themselves in their New Hampshire home and protected their fortress with armaments and booby-trapped surroundings. Undercover federal officers infiltrated their home, however, and promptly arrested them before any violence could break out. In October 2009 and January 2010, Elaine and Edward were sentenced to 35 and 37 years in prison respectively.

6. Jack Abramoff

Jack Abramoff, an influential lobbyist and businessman, was convicted in 2006 of charges of conspiracy, honest services fraud and tax evasion, though the investigation which led to his conviction was just the tip of an iceberg that revealed focal-points of corruption deep within the American political system. Owing the IRS $1.7m, notwithstanding the other charges he faced, Abramoff was sentenced to 6 years, of which he served 3 and a half.

5. Igor Olenicoff

It doesn’t matter how rich one gets, some people just want more! This was the case with Russian-born billionaire real estate developer Igor Olenicoff, who filed dodgy tax returns which omitted accounts holding up to $200m. Pleading guilty at trial in Santa Anna, CA, in 2007, he paid back the $52m in owed taxes and received 2 years’ probation. With a net worth of almost $2bn, however, he’s unlikely to feel the pinch.

4. Victor Posner

Victor Posner was an innovative businessman and ruthless corporate raider who is credited with popularizing the term “leveraged buyout” and pioneering the hostile takeover. He was also a noted philanthropist, but given that his 1987 conviction for tax evasion was based on deliberate overvaluing of a charitable donation in order to deny the IRS millions of dollars, one has to wonder if he was motivated by his heart or his number-crunching head. As well as paying out $4m in back taxes, penalties, interest and fines, he had to give $3m of his fortune to the homeless (in 1984 he had a net worth of $250m) and work with them for twenty hours a week, every week, for five years.

3. Leandro P. Rizzuto

Despite a 2008 net worth of $1.4bn, the founder of Conair, Leandro Rizzuto, hasn’t always had it easy. Perhaps with the aim of climbing higher up the Forbes Rich List, or perhaps simply because he could, Rizzuto funneled millions of dollars of kickback money into various foreign bank accounts, the existence of which he neglected to mention to the IRS. In 2002 he pleaded guilty to tax fraud and was sentenced to just over three years in prison, while also paying the IRS almost $2m for the six year’s worth of federal taxes he had dodged. Con-air indeed…

2. Leona Helmsley

Shockingly, someone with the nickname “The Queen of Mean” turned out to not be the kind of person who abides by the rules of civil society – like paying taxes. Billionaire hotel operator Leona Helmsley had a particular philosophy when it came to taxes. As her housekeeper famously testified, Helmsley felt that: “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” Apparently, Helmsley also didn’t feel that she should pay her bills, and when disgruntled contractors took her to court over a $8m mansion remodeling contract they felt it only fair to mention that Helmsley had been deducting the cost as hotel expenses. A sentence of 16 years in prison swiftly followed, although it was later significantly reduced.

1. Walter Anderson

Some people say that if you’re going to lie, you may as well tell a big lie. This certainly seems to have been telephone entrepreneur Walter Anderson’s philosophy when in 1998 he claimed he owed only $495 in tax on a reported income of $67,939. His actual income was around $126m, but he didn’t stop there. He admitted as part of his plea that he had hidden $365m overall, and was sentenced to nine years in prison and ordered to pay $200m in restitution. Clearly nobody ever told him that not only does crime not pay, but it can end up leaving you with the bill.

Bonus: Lyndon LaRouche

Lyndon LaRouche was a man who ran for the US presidency eight times, at every election between 1976 and 2004. It didn’t work out for him, though, perhaps because he seems to have had little respect for government institutions such as the IRS. In 1986, he and associates were accused of millions of dollars’ worth of credit card fraud. Following a mistrial, he was indicted by a federal grand jury and convicted of mail fraud, conspiracy to commit mail fraud and federal tax evasion. He was sentenced to 15 years, though ended up serving only 5 years of the sentence, and spent all of it at the Federal Medical Center, Rochester, MN. At 88 years old, he’s still kicking, though unlikely to be appearing in the White House any time soon.

It’s tax man time. Around the country every April, private citizens and most business owners scrape together 25% or more of their income and send it off to the IRS. So how is it that giant multinationals, purportedly taxed at around 35%, manage to pay close to nothing—or, in GE’s case this year, nothing—in taxes?

For example, between 2007-09, the country’s top five companies (by market capitalization) have paid between 4.5% and 25.8%. Luckily for them, tax returns, due to the type and amount of information they require, don’t actually give the IRS much headway on figuring out which activities are legitimate, and which are shadowy. With more than 50,000 tax rules, corporate accountants have space to be creative. They do, saving their employers billions of dollars.

Here are 25 companies that will probably pay a much lower tax rate than you this year.

25. Carnival Cruise Lines

Image: Scott L/Wikimedia

Cruise lines aren’t just about glamorous vessels and state-of-the-art leisure technology. There’s something far murkier than the oil that pumps through the hearts of Carnival’s twenty-two ships.

No, there is no aquatic killer stalking the decks, but your pocketbook may think so. Case in point, between 2005 and 2009, Carnival brought in a windfall of $11.25 billion. Sounds pretty sweet, right? Bear in mind that the average tax rate for a corporate entity is about 35%. Even following that, it would have left them with a little over with a $7.3 billion profit. Not too shabby, all things considered.

How much did they actually pay in taxes, courtesy of the warren of tax shelters, incentives and hidey holes they utilized? $126 million. For the average person, $126 million seems like a lot, but when the national deficit is in the trillions (1 trillion = 100,000 million), that is barely a drop in the bucket. Far from the average of 35%, they paid out a paltry 1.12%. Don’t know about you, but to us, something about that seems all wet.

24. Boeing

One of the biggest aerospace companies in the world also flies by on some blessedly low tax rates. From 2004-2009, Boeing made $17.5 billion pre-taxes. That’s nothing to sneeze at. But they only paid $796 million in taxes, thanks to tax breaks on sales made outside the United States, and a full 38 subsidiaries in tax havens outside of the US. One estimate has the company’s 2007-9 tax rate at -0.8%; its tax rate since 2004 has hit a maximum of only 4.6%. Add the recent $35 billion federal military contract to the cockpit, and Boeing has a mighty sweet relationship with the government.

23. AT&T

AT&T is the largest provider of telecommunications in the country, which means, in the grand scale of things, they are pretty ripe for the taxman’s picking.

As with any corporate behemoth with the propensity to grow beyond reason, AT&T began vacuuming up competitors under the guise of providing better and broader service, like a turbocharged Hoover. As of 2007, AT&T even changed the language of their legal policy to stipulate that they can basically shut down any and every part of a user’s service if that user does anything whatsoever that AT&T deems “detrimental” to itself and anything remotely related to it and its sundry bits and pieces. That makes their old slogan, “reach out and touch someone,” seem incredibly creepy, doesn’t it?

Surprisingly enough, with 2010 sales of $123 billion, pretax income of $19 billion and taxes of $6.2 billion, their tax rate is, compared to other multinational groups, close to where it ought to be. Because there has to be a loophole somewhere, executives can bill the company $14,000 a year for their private tax purposes.

22. Ford Motor Co.

Ford had a so-so year in 2010, with sales of $118 billion. Pretax income was $3 billion, yet they only paid $69 million in taxes. This means, for those of you keeping score, that their tax rate was only about 2.3%. Ford’s losses deserve credit for that tax fringe benefit, but hey, at least they never took a government bailout.

21. Cognizant

Cognizant offers IT-related consultancy and services around the globe, where it also has a number of convenient tax havens. What makes their 19.8% tax rate galling is that they’re part of a group of other multinational companies who are trying to get Congress to pass yet another tax repatriation holiday. The last one they passed back in 2004 didn’t go as well as planned. Well, not for the little guys anyway. However, it was a smashing success for executives who came up with the idea. We have just a few words for Congress courtesy of Frankie Goes to Hollywood: “Relax, Don’t do it.”

20. IBM

Edward Norton’s character, the narrator from the movie Fight Club, once opined that, “when deep space exploration ramps up, it’ll be the corporations that name everything. The IBM Stellar sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet McDonalds.” Although IBM may not yet have stamped its name on NASA’s next generation of space vehicles, its tax evasion tricks, like many of its tech-company bedfellows, are still pretty out of this world. For the whole of 2009, IBM’s gross income was $13.4 billion, with a 45.7% profit margin. ’09 was the sixth consecutive year of IBM seeing increasing profits. That same year, it only had a 26% tax rate. It’s not Google’s 2.4% rate, but it’s still lower than what most of us pay.

19. Oracle

Image: Oracle Corp. Communications/Flickr

When it comes to hoarding gold, the software, hardware, technology consultancy and telecommunications industries are where it’s at. One of the big five technology firms, Oracle, boasted an income of $23.25 billion in 2009, and $26.82 billion in 2010. How much of that do you think that the business hardware and software company paid to the IRS?

Like the others on this list, the answer is not much. About a quarter of Oracle’s revenue comes from an Irish subsidiary with no employees, according to a recent filing uncovered by BusinessWeek. That’s despite the fact that about 44% of its business comes from the US. Even when there are products or services that originate from the United States, Oracle, like many multinationals, has found that building a labyrinth of tax shelters around the globe is the best way to fool Uncle Sam’s probing hand.

18. Microsoft

It’s a little ironic that Microsoft is on this list, considering how much money how much money the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pours into such worthy causes as education, health care, the reduction of poverty, and exposure to innovative information technology.

Gates may no longer run the show at Microsoft’s Redmond Washington offices, but the man’s philanthropy starts to look more like a mercenary government when you realize how much money he didn’t spend on taxes. Remember that the going rate for the corporate tax rate is 35%. But even since the halcyon days when Gates was in charge, his baby has paid maybe 5-10% in taxes. In a weird way, Gates has funneled the money he should have owed the government into philanthropy that arguably fills the gub’mints gaps.

17. Allegheny Energy

Image: Don O’Brien/Flickr

Allegheny is probably thumbing its nose at other power companies, since it has paid between 1.1% and 2.28% in taxes over the last ten years. Why so little? Unlike most huge companies, it does not really have a multinational arm, so it can’t simply stash its dough in the Bahamas. Moreover, it’s a power generation company that provides and generates electricity in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland.

This crucial serviced earned them $2.5 billion over the course of several years. Out of all that, you might think that some of the cash went to the IRS; indeed, a paltry $58 million did. This was due to a tax break, which they received after suffering huge losses in energy trading as well as other ventures back in the early 2000s. Talk about silver lining.

16. Cisco

If a tax holiday strikes you as an extraordinarily bad idea, welcome to the club. But that is precisely what big name companies like Cisco (who makes consumer electronics, like routers, modems, and computer security products) are trying to get Congress to allow with a targeted website called WinAmerica.

Congress would pass this tax repatriation day, and multinational companies like Cisco or Google bring in a lot of their offshore funds (stashed in places like the Bahamas because there are no tax laws there) into the US, but at a much lower tax rate than usual.

The problem is, Cisco already pays an enviable tax rate of 19.8%, because of those aforementioned offshore funds. How low? Try 19.8%. Last time Congress passed such a holiday back in 2004, most of the money went back to the executives who begged for the breaks in the first place.

15. Broadcom

Image: Coolcaesar/Wikimedia

If you were a manufacturer of semiconductors for the wireless and broadband communications sectors of the technology world, how would you save as much money as possible? If lobbying Congress, performing all your research and development in the United States in order to get tax breaks, and selling your products in the markets of low-tax countries to keep your profit margin in the black are your answers, then you might be Broadcom.

Broadcom pulled in more than $1.2 billion over the last few years, but only paid a nano-scale $41 million in taxes, or 3.32%. If you have used an iPod, played a Wii or used an iPhone, you will have used a product that had some of its guts made at Broadcom. Note that the low corporate tax burden on each product doesn’t necessarily make it feel lighter.

14. NVIDIA

This multinational company manufactures graphics processing units (GPUs) and chipsets for various computers. Their hardware covers markets from gaming to supercomputing, computer-aided design to smartphones.

Here’s that multinational tech company equation again: Tech + diverse product line + global reach = > loophole use to avoid taxes. For about $1.8 billion in net profit during 2005-2009, NVIDIA only paid $41 million in taxes, or a 2.2% tax rate.

Their workaround for this was entirely legal. Like other tech firms, NVIDIA does much of their R&D over here, granting them huge IRS tax credits. Then they shill their products out to countries with a low tax rate. NVIDIA’s slogan is “NVIDIA – The Way It’s Meant To Be Played.” Oddly fitting, considering how they are playing the government like a harp.

13. Xcel Energy

While we consumers have been happy for years with our carbon-belching fossil fuel-driven plants, Xcel tries to do a little better. They boast plants that run on coal, wind, solar, and hydropower, along with biomass power generation and nuclear power. That is all well and good for the residents of Minnesota, Colorado, Michigan, North and South Dakota, New Mexico, Texas and Wisconsin who make use of Xcel’s energy output.

But something is fishy here. With such a huge coverage area, you might expect (and rightly so) that Xcel is seriously raking in the dough. Over the course of four years, they pulled in about $4.3 billion dollars, while paying a paltry $77 million in taxes.

As it turns out, they may actually be in trouble with the IRS over it too. We can’t help but picture Xcel like the kid who got his hand stuck in the cookie jar. That measly 1.78% rate can’t hold forever, after all.

12. Amazon

Amazon is one of the world’s leading online retailers of everything, from pacifiers for your preemie to cashmere Chihuahua sweaters. All that stuff has netted Amazon pre-tax profits of $3.5 billion, but they paid taxes of only $152 million. That’s an almost-Bahamian 4.3%.

You have to give Amazon credit where it’s due, though, even if you disagree with their (perfectly legal) tax sheltering antics. Amazon is one of the best purveyors of stuff we need, as well as crap we think we want. They know it, and as long as there are customers willing to buy their stuff, they’ll keep squirreling away the money.

11. Host Hotels and Resorts

Host Marriott has split apart and absorbed other companies no less than six times since 1992. Since then, it has garnered handsome and creative tax breaks, including a $75 million benefit for installing coal treatment machinery in 2002, a slew of tax breaks for the construction of their hotels, and, of course, lobbying.

Such maneuvering helped it keep all but 3.05% of its 2004-9 earnings all to itself. Over that period, it drew in $1.1 billion before taxes, yet only paid $34 million in taxes. That’s what we call a hospitable tax situation.

10. ConocoPhilips

Image: FICelloguy/Wikimedia

ConocoPhilips is the fifth-largest oil company in the country. Typically, CP, like lots of other multinational companies, would want to hide its wealth offshore, but since most of its oil comes from countries where the tax rate is even higher, the oil giant has to rely on government-sponsored tax breaks, like the 2004 oil and gas manufacturing deduction, purportedly passed in order to help domestic oil companies stimulate job growth in the United States. And you know how those oil companies sink their money into domestic job growth whenever they can.

CP’s tax break recently billowed out around the $451 million mark (how much they paid in taxes on a $16 billion income between 2007 and 2009). For those keeping score, that’s $451 million that might have been put to (cough) domestic jobs. Of course, with the guys holding the purse strings being who they are, that money probably went right back into lobbying ($18 million in 2009, for example).

9. Valero Energy

Image: Coolcaesar/Wikimedia

Valero Energy, based out of San Antonio, has made a killing with its strategy of refining sour, rather than sweet and light, crude oil http://www.marketwatch.com/story/valero-energy-ceo-to-wall-st-youve-got-us-wrong?source=blq%2Fyhoo&siteid=yhoo&dist=yhoo. But there’s certainly a lot of sugar on its tax strategy. Think $68 billion in sales, but a $157 million tax refund from the IRS over the course of three years, plus a $134 million tax break for the oil and gas they manufactured (to stimulate domestic job growth, remember?). They’re also cozy with the Department of Defense, for whom they’ve provided bulk fuel for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Incidentally, one of their other brand logos is the shamrock, signifying that fortune does indeed favor the well-connected.

8. Citigroup

Picture, if you will, an Olympic-sized pool full of money. Now picture it filled up with hundreds and gift-wrapped by the government. Then you have Citi’s whopping $2.5 trillion bailout.

Perhaps even more impressive is how much the bohemoth didn’t pay in taxes after their $4.4 billion year worth of profits last year. That is to say, they didn’t pay a single cent. How’s that for self-centered greed? It just goes to show you that while you may find, with ample work, a seemingly worthy politician with the country’s best interests at heart, the truth is that everyone has their price.

7. Pfizer

Image: David Richfield/Wikimedia

Pharmaceutical companies’ products are supposed to make us feel better. They break our fevers, they ease the pain of our aching and aging joints, they help us with our…intimate issues, and a whole lot more.

However, the maker of such wonders as Advil, Dimetapp and Depo Provera is no stranger to back alley-esque drug testing schemes in Nigeria, lawsuits over faulty heart valves, hostile takeovers, and monopolizing industries. What’s more, their primary US plant in Groton, CT is one of the worst polluters in the country. If we overlook for a moment that they’ve had their wrist slapped more times than a naughty child in Sunday School (including a fourth indictment on drug fraud charges in the span of ten years back in 2009), we can get to their taxes.

Like many other multinational company, they don’t really pay much due to offshore accounts and the right government friendships. 17.1% is their current tax rate as of 2010. For a company whose net income was over $67.8 billion in 2010, it’s almost enough to make you swear off drugs completely.

6. Qualcomm

Image: Coolcaesar/Wikimedia

Wireless giant Qualcomm, with a 2010 revenue of $10.9 billion and a tax rate of 20%, is by no means the biggest offender when it comes to paying taxes (or not, as the case seems to be). If you think offshore tax shelters are bad, Qualcomm, along with several other corporate groups, are trying to get Congress to pass a tax holiday via a site called WinAmerica. Apparently they think that by combining “fiscal responsibility” with the devil-may-care attitude of Charlie Sheen, it will endear them to the American public when all their tax money (brought in at a much lower rate) will build up jobs and foster opportunities.

Though nice in theory, the truth of the thing is that that the money saved doesn’t go to worthy causes. It will mostly just go back into execs’ pockets, lobbying efforts, and more outsourcing schemes.

Would you rather have a fake tax repatriation holiday, where bigwig corporations put on a mummer’s show and make as if they are going to do the right thing, only to offer us up some purple Kool Aid, or get poked in the eye with a sharp stick? At least with the stick and eye scenario, you have a choice about what type of wood and which eye. The other doesn’t even give you the illusion of a chance or choice.

5. Bank of America

Once upon a time, banks were arguably a noble institution. You stashed your money with them for a nominal fee, and, with savings accounts, you earned interest. Sometimes they charged you additional fees.

But as Wall Street grew bigger and more unwieldy, like the Titans of Greek myth, they became reckless and dangerous, devouring all in their path for the sake of profit. Case in point: Bank of America. Not only did BofA grab a $1 trillion bailout, they announced a $4.4 billion profit around the same time. Then the IRS gave them back $1.9 billion in tax refunds. Government and Wall Street aren’t just scratching each other’s backs, they’re giving each other full-body massages.

4. Goldman Sachs

Image: QuantumQuark/Wikimedia

Money is Goldman Sachs’ their raison d’etre. The company, which deals in investment banking/management, securities and other financial matters, besides constructing custom revolving doors, cleaned up rather well in 2008. After making a $2.3 billion profit that year, they received an $800 billion refund from the Federal Reserve and US Treasury. Talk about friends in high places. Seen another way, that’s one big chunk of the national deficit to be moving around.

3. ExxonMobil

Do you enjoy paying taxes? Do you enjoy giving upwards of 25% of your hard-earned money to the IRS every year? ExxonMobil, like you, certainly doesn’t. That’s why, back in 2009, they didn’t pay a single cent in taxes in the United States.

Exxon accomplished this by shifting the bulk of their operations overseas, meaning that the IRS can’t touch any profits the company brings in. Even if they take a loss here in the States, they can at least break even, if not do even better, in the long haul.

Exxon, like many corporations, also muddies the waters of the tax pool by breaking themselves into multiple entities. In addition, that pesky ruling that allows multinational conglomerates to function like people means that when Exxon does pay taxes, it might end up paying far less, to the tune of 5-15%.

This is in contrast to Big Oil’s usual tax-laden state of affairs. Most of the time, big oil companies actually pay upwards of 40 to 55% of their profits back to the tax man. Unlike companies that focus on software and technology, overseas holdings in countries where most of our oil comes from (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, etc.) are burdened by even higher taxes than in the US.

They tried to offset this by funneling profits from places like Abu Dhabi and Azerbaijan into accounts in the Caribbean including the Cayman Islands. For them, it’s legal, and no, Sammy can’t touch it.

2. Google

When it comes to search engines, there are lots of choices. Dogpile, Bing, Altavista, Mahalo, Lycos and Alexis, to name a few. Or proprietary and purpose-driven search engines like The Ladders (provider of listings for $100k jobs), LexisNexis (subscription-based provider of legal, government and business based info) and MapQuest (AOL-owned as of 2000 and provider of, what else? Maps and directions).

Despite all of these choices, Google is still the most popular, almost to monopolistic proportions. It’s a $30 billion company, but the taxes it pays on those profits are a fallow 2.4%, thanks to a popular strategy known as the “Double Irish.” Google has two Irish subsidiaries. One is a holding company in Bermuda, the other is located in Ireland. In Ireland, intellectual property royalties reduce income taxes, lowering an already meager 12.5% tax rate. Google’s Irish company in Ireland pays those royalties to its Irish company in tax-haven Bermuda, funneling them through the tax-advantaged Netherlands on the way.

All told, this tasty strategy has saved the Internet giant $3.1 billion over the last few years.

1. General Electric

“Imagination at work.” This is GE’s current slogan. It certainly takes a certain amount of imagination for their chief accountant, himself a former employee of the Treasury, to work things just so. That, and a disgusting amount lobbying in Washington for lower taxes.

To boot, John Samuels, the aforementioned, bow tie-wearing accountant, isn’t the only one. Former IRS officials and even writers of tax law straight out of Congress itself were in the fray. They joined Samuels in the fold of GE’s financial department to save the conglomerate a few bucks.

A measly $5.1 billion of GE’s $14.2 billion income for 2010 came from its operations stateside. Their total tax burden for 2010 amounted to zero. In fact, they got $3.2 billion back. Those tax subsidies, shelters and tax credits provided a giant invisibility cloak for the hulking giant that is GE, helping the tax man not see it.

The US corporate income tax rate is 35%. Yet this year, Google, which made $5.5 billion in revenues, only paid an effective tax rate of 2.4%. Indeed, it’s not unusual for a corporation to pay only 6-7% in effective taxes.

Such numbers put you and me and most small businesses to shame. What gives?

It turns out that tax credits aren’t the only trick corporations use to evade taxes. From Intel to Bath & Body Works, most big American corporations have a subsidiary and income shifting scheme that radically skews the amounts they end up paying the IRS. Here are five of the main components that help corporations write pint-sized IRS checks.

Subsidiaries

Why make profits in your home state when you can move them somewhere with lower income taxes? Such is the rationale of many American companies headquartered in high-tax states. Strategies like the so-called Las Vegas Loophole let companies move profits to subsidiaries located in states like Nevada, which has no corporate income tax.

Chain retailers are among the corporations that love to set up subsidiaries. Wal-Mart, for example, set up an out-of-state subsidiary that “collects ‘rent’ from Wal-Mart stores, enabling the chain to disguise (an estimated $7.3 billion in profits over four years) as expenses,” according to this article. By paying itself rent via a real estate investment trust (REIT), Wal-Mart avoids additional taxes while keeping money inside the corporation.

Another trick is to create a trademark holding company in a state that doesn’t tax intangible assets like trademarks. Home Depot has a paper subsidiary in trademark-tax-free Delaware. This subsidiary collects large trademark use fees from Home Depot stores in other states, writes NewRules. Home Depot deducts those fees as a business expense, and voila, its taxes dive.

Transfer pricing

About half of the 50 US states have adopted combined reporting rules to clog the subsidiary loopholes mentioned above. Combined reporting requires companies to list all of their sources of profit, regardless of state, before figuring out their state tax burden.

For many companies, however, national combined reporting requirements aren’t an issue—they just create subsidiaries in international tax shelters like Ireland and the Cayman Islands. A tool called transfer pricing lets companies make profits in tax havens while allocating expenses to higher-tax countries, writes the OECD Observer.

A company can apply transfer pricing to a variety of financial categories, including interest rates, service charges, share sales, and depreciation. This fickleness makes transfer pricing a continued point of intense scrutiny for governments around the world.

Google’s “Double Irish” strategy is one popular transfer pricing scheme. Google created two companies in Ireland to execute this maneuver. One pays royalties to use intellectual property (expenses that reduce income tax in Ireland). A second, located in Bermuda, collects those royalties. The meat in Google’s sandwich is the Netherlands, where profits go on their way from Ireland to Bermuda.

“Irish tax law exempts certain royalties to companies in other EU- member nations,” according to the excellent Bloomberg article that describes Google’s acrobatics. “A brief detour to the Netherlands avoids…Irish withholding tax.”

If you think the federal government would want to sink its teeth into those profits by implementing an international combined reporting requirement, think again. The feds would rather get what they can without changing the law: Google and the IRS negotiated for three years before coming to “an arrangement” that let the company execute its transfer pricing strategy, according to Bloomberg.

Nowhere income

States can only tax corporations with physical facilities, or a “nexus,” within the boundaries of the state. Otherwise, federal law doesn’t let states tax corporations, according to NewRules. Just selling goods or services in a state without having a factory or other facilities there translates to no state taxes.

Corporations have leveraged this rule to the point of having “nowhere income” that is not taxable in any state. NewRules illustrates with an example: “…if Nails Inc. has all of its property and payroll in two states, but just 10% of its sales in those states, then it will pay state income taxes on only 70% of its profits: (100 + 100 + 10)/3. The other 30% will go untaxed.” Taxes are even easier to avoid in states where sales are more heavily weighted than, say, payroll or property, according to NewRules.

Nowhere income becomes more elaborate if you can pull it off internationally. Intel did just this in the early 2000s, according to CTJ.org. The company declared “millions of dollars in profits from selling US-made computer chips as Japanese income for US tax purposes.” This exempted it from US taxes. Meanwhile, a US-Japan tax treaty required Japan to “treat the profits as American.” That meant Intel didn’t have to pay Japanese tax, either.

Income shifting

No transfer pricing-subsidiary scheme is complete without income shifting. This happens when a company transfers or licenses its intellectual property to a subsidiary in a tax shelter. Any foreign profits based on that technology are taxed according to the subsidiary country’s tax law.

According to US tax rules, such subsidiaries must pay an “arm’s length” amount for those rights, the same mutually-agreed-upon amount any unaffiliated company would pay for them. So parent companies set that amount low to avoid tax burden, writes CTJ.org.

The nature of the loophole means that the feds can’t get lost taxes back, either. Bloomberg writes that “…multinationals that shift profits overseas are deferring U.S. income taxes, not avoiding them permanently. The deferral lasts until companies decide to bring the earnings back to the U.S. In practice, they rarely repatriate significant portions, thus avoiding the taxes indefinitely.”

Tax havens

Some tourist havens, notably Bermuda and Ireland, also happen to be stellar tax havens. “58% of offshore profits are now recorded in tax havens,” according to this FinFacts Ireland article. US operations, for example, have recorded more than $25 billion in profits in tiny Bermuda, which doesn’t charge any taxes, writes FinFacts.

It doesn’t matter that most of those multinationals’ sales happened in higher-tax countries like Germany, the US and the UK. Wherever tax rates are low, multinational profits rise, sometimes exponentially. That translates to tens of billions of dollars the US Treasury doesn’t get its hands on. US corporations, meanwhile, enjoy enviable tax rates, while the tax havens that house them benefit from the injection of foreign capital.

With the April tax deadline having safely passed, most law-abiding citizens will have fought their way through the forms and ever-changing rules once more and somehow made it – yet again – just in time. Phew! But there are some – quite a few celebrities actually – who don’t even bother. Whether claiming to not reside at their residence, living in a different state or being a legal alien altogether, many celebrities come up with weird excuses when it comes to evading taxes.

1. Wesley Snipes

Actor Wesley Snipes was sentenced to three years in prison for failing to file his taxes for five years, from 1999 to 2004. Unlike some celebrities below who simply claimed to have “forgotten” about paying taxes, Snipes tried to make the IRS believe he’s a resident alien (as if they don’t have to pay tax, just by the way) but being born in Florida, that’s hard to do. Snipes appealed and is free on bail for the time being but still needs to pay $17 million in taxes, plus interest and penalties. A truly alien tale.

2. Willie Nelson

Singer Willie Nelson, instead of coming up with lame excuses when being slapped with a charge of $16.7 million in back taxes in 1990, decided to do what he does best to get out of this sticky situation: sing. After the IRS had seized most of his assets to cover the amount and Nelson still fell short, he released the double album The IRS Tapes: Who’ll Buy My Memories? Needless to say, all proceeds went straight to the IRS and Nelson eventually paid off his tax debts. Most of Nelson’s stuff that the IRS auctioned off also came back to him: Most were purchased by fans who were only too happy to help the singer out and return his things back to him. What a happy ending.

3. Nicolas Cage

As of 2009, actor Nicolas Cage owed more than $6.6 million in back taxes from 2007. Claiming to be “just a victim,” the actor put the blame on his financial manager’s negligence. He in turn blamed the actor’s “reckless spending habits”. But all the excuses and mudslinging didn’t help – the IRS and the state of Nevada foreclosed on Cage’s multimillion-dollar home in Las Vegas in November of last year. Far from being homeless, Cage simply moved into one of his other homes. Oh, celebrity problems!

4. Annie Leibovitz

Compared to those stately sums, photographer Annie Leibovitz’s outstanding federal tax amount of $2.1 million doesn’t seem that much, given that she probably makes that much taking just a few pictures of the rich and famous. She also owes $250,000 in New York state taxes.

5. Sinbad

Professionally, we haven’t really heard much from comedian Sinbad, aka David Atkins, who was all the rage in the ‘80s and ‘90s. He’s been in the news though for owing the state of California $2.5 million in personal income tax. We’re sure that’s not the kind of publicity he was looking for.

6. Marc Anthony

Also in the $2.5-million-range of tax debts is singer Marc Anthony. He got slapped with that amount for failing to pay taxes from 2000 to 2004, a time period when his earnings were $15.5 million. Anthony feigned ignorance, claiming that he thought his accountant had filed taxes. Because Anthony paid up promptly and no intention to cheat could be proven, all charges were dropped. Back to la vida loca then for the singer and his wife Jennifer Lopez?

7. Dionne Warwick

Adding further to California’s budget deficit is singer Dionne Warwick who owes the state $2.2 million in personal income tax. At least she can claim to be in the Top Ten – of California’s 250 worst tax debtors that is.

8. Snoop Dogg

Singer Snoop Dogg, known for his antics, can add another title to his repertoire: tax evader. That too the second time in a row. Last year, the rapper owed the state of California $284,000; now the amount has grown to $598,000. No sign of payment yet.

9. Pamela Anderson

The busty Baywatch-star recently got busted for not paying her personal income tax in California. The amount in question: $493,000. We’re sure a few photo shoots or ad revenues should cover that in no time.

10. Prince

Rounding up our Top Ten is Prince. The singer formerly known as Prince is now also known as a tax evader. At least his management company is – it owes the state of Minnesota around $450,000 in state taxes. We’re sure releasing some of the songs in his vault would cover this small sum – compared with the previous ones – very quickly.

Starbucks: You get a free coffee if you bring your own mug. (This is actually an Earth Day promotion, but you can’t argue with free coffee on tax day.)

Cinnabon: 2 free bite-sized cupcakes between 6-8pm. Valid only at Cinnabon mall locations.

Taco del Mar: 1 free taco, but you have to fill out a form and they email you the coupon.

IHOP: Kids eat free between 4-8pm.

MaggieMoo’s: 1 free slice of ice cream pizza between 3-7pm.

McCormick & Schmick’s: $10.40 dinner and drink specials.

PF Chang’s: 15% off your meal.

Boston Market: Buy 1 meal, get 1 free (with this coupon).

Hydromassage: 1 free massage between today and Sunday. Book ahead.

Whole Foods: No sales tax in Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia.

Office Depot: Free copies of 25 pages of tax-related documents.

Staples: Free copies of 30 pages of tax-related documents.

Dairy Queen: 1 free mini blizzard in Washington, DC only (there’s a Blizzardmobile outside the IRS office).

Here’s the catch. You must fill out a tax form called the Schedule M to get your credit. No tax form, no credit. That’s true for self-employed workers, too.

Here’s where things get confusing. There is no rebate check for Making Work Pay. Instead, the government actually reduced your payroll taxes last year. That way, you could get a few more bucks each paycheck, and get use of the credit sooner. It was incremental, and you probably didn’t notice it.

Oddly, the IRS doesn’t actually apply that credit until you file a Schedule M. Bankrate’s Kay Bell explains how it works:

Essentially what the IRS wants via this new form is to double-check that people get the correct credit amount due them. The problem is that in some cases, people got more credit than they should have. This could be the case for someone who held multiple jobs or who could be claimed as a dependent on someone else’s tax return. In such instances, the Schedule M will account for the over payments.

If all of these amounts are more than your tax bill, you’ll get a refund. But if you didn’t claim the credit, that money won’t be counted, so you’re shorting yourself.

Note to government: Rebate checks would have been a better idea. Read more of Kay’s article here for further clarification on the Schedule M.

You’ve probably done your taxes by now (or put them off, or evaded them). If you’re lucky enough to get a tax refund this year, the IRS has a neat website called Where’s My Refund? that lets you check your refund status online. Simply fill out this online form, and you’ll get information in as few as 72 hours.

Because using Where’s My Refund? is by far the easiest way to track your tax refund that we’ve ever seen, we wanted to share some of the key components of it with you. Here are the main components of the program (from the IRS’ good fact sheet):

What is it? Where’s My Refund? or ¿Dónde está mi reembolso? are interactive tools on IRS.gov and the fastest, easiest way to get information about your federal income tax refund. Whether you split your refund among several accounts, opted for direct deposit into one account, used part of your refund to buy U.S. savings bonds or asked the IRS to mail you a check, Where’s My Refund? and ¿Dónde está mi reembolso? give you online access to your refund information nearly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

When will you know your refund status? If you e-file, you can get refund information 72 hours after the IRS acknowledges receipt of your return. If you file a paper return, refund information will generally be available three to four weeks after mailing your return.

What do you need to check your refund status? When checking the status of your refund, have your federal tax return handy. To get your personalized refund information you must enter:

• Your Social Security Number or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number
• Your filing status which will be Single, Married Filing Joint Return, Married Filing Separate Return, Head of Household, or Qualifying Widow(er)
• Exact whole dollar refund amount shown on your tax return

What will Where’s My Refund? tell you? Once you enter your personal information, you could get several responses, including:

• Acknowledgement that your return was received and is in processing.
• The mailing date or direct deposit date of your refund.
• Notice that the IRS could not deliver your refund due to an incorrect address. In this instance, you may be able to change or correct your address online using Where’s My Refund?.
• Where’s My Refund? also includes links to customized information based on your specific situation. The links guide you through the steps to resolve any issues affecting your refund. For example, if you do not get the refund within 28 days from the original IRS mailing date shown on Where’s My Refund?, you may be able to start a refund trace.

When do you get your refund? Refund checks are normally sent out weekly on Fridays. If you check the status of your refund and are not given the date it will be issued, please wait until the next week before checking back.

Note that the IRS will never send you an email asking for personal information. If you receive an email from the IRS asking for personal information, it’s probably a scam. Do not reply to it.

Also not that the Where’s My Refund? site has previously had outages. Don’t be surprised if you run into delays.

This is a guest post by Manny Davis of Back Taxes Help.

In 2009, many tax credits were augmented and created. Tax credits can help you lower your total tax bill and increase your chances for a tax refund. Below are some of this year’s most important tax credits. Some are new, some changed, and some became part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

For those of you who are unsure of the difference between a tax credit and a tax deduction, a tax credit lowers your total tax bill directly, whereas a tax deduction lowers your taxable income (indirectly taxes dollar for dollar), sometimes placing you in a different income tax bracket.

Consumer Energy Tax Credit
This tax credit is a good one. If you have made repairs to your home (non-business) to improve energy efficiency you will be able to get up to 30% back from that investment but no more than $1,500. This would include better insulation through the installation of more efficient windows, doors, roofing and even the installation of water heaters, solar thermal technologies, natural and oil furnaces and so on. If you are unsure whether your recent energy efficiency investment qualifies, contact a CPA or the IRS directly.

American Opportunity Tax Credit
The old Hope Tax Credit was expanded for 2009 with the new American Opportunity Tax Credit. As a parent, for each student in college now, you can save up to $2,500 in taxes. There are income limitations with this credit though. Once you start to make over $80k as a single parent (or $160k for married couples), the credit begins to phase out. Realize though that you cannot claim the Hope Tax Credit and this credit in the same year for one student.

Home Buyer Tax Credit
This credit applies to new home buyers and even existing home buyers that meet certain guidelines. First time home buyers who purchased after January 1st, 2009 and before April 30th, 2010 can take up to $8,000 ($4,000 if married and filing separately) off of their tax bill. This tax credit is completely phased out once you make over $145k (individual) or $245k (for a married couple).

For existing home owners, who moved primary residences, the credit is $6,500 (individual) or $3,250 (if filing jointly) but you must have lived in the home for five consecutive years. Furthermore, it only applies for homes purchased after November 6th, 2009.

Making Work Pay Tax Credit
With this credit, you can claim up to 6.2% on earned income from wages but no more than $400 for individuals or $800 for married couples filing jointly. However, this really only applies to those that are self-employed as your employer should have reduced withholding for this during the year. Realize that does not apply to those receiving a pension, or unemployment.

Electric Motor Vehicle and Electric Plug-In Vehicle Tax Credits
These tax credits differ slightly in a few different ways if you went “green” in 2009.
* The Electric Motor Vehicle tax credit ranges from $2,500 to $15,000 depending on the capacity of the battery and how heavy the vehicle is.
* The Electric Plug-In Tax Credit is 10% of the vehicle cost capped out at $2,500. To take advantage of this your vehicle had to go into service after February 17th, 2009.

Adoption Tax Credit
This tax credit increased to $12,150 for 2009 but the tax credit is only applicable if the adoption expenses were paid this year (unless they are a special needs child).

Government Retiree Credit
This tax credit is $250 ($500 if filing jointly) for 2009 if you received a government pension payment or annuity in 2009. Realize though this credit becomes invalidated for you if you took an economic recovery payment.

Earned Income Tax Credit
This credit applies to low-wage earners and it had a few changes in 2009. One change is that the credit increased for individuals with 3 children or more and for married couples filing together. Also the income limit to qualify for this credit has increased as well.

For more details on any credit, visit IRS.gov.

Bonus: Use Your Tax Refund To Buy US Series I Savings Bonds
By utilizing some of these tax credits above you can increase your refund or your chances of getting a refund. Starting this year, the IRS is you purchase US Savings Bonds with your refund. Although these US bonds offer low rates of return during these economic times, they are great investments.

The IRS for this year’s filing will allow you to take up to $5,000 of your tax refund to buy U.S. Series I Savings Bonds in multiples of $50 by selecting this on Form 8888.

If you purchase more than $250, the denominations of the bonds should get larger. Anything over $5k or that be divided by a multiple of $50 will need to be deposited into a savings/checking account.

With the Federal government spending at all time highs, and with my belief that inflation is on the horizon, US savings bonds can be a very attractive hedge against inflation. Taxes on these bonds are due when redeemed but you will not be responsible for state or local taxes with these bonds. One drawback to these bonds is the fact that they cannot be redeemed until a year has passed from their issuance so be sure to check with your investment adviser.

Manny Davis is a partner and tax accountant at Back Taxes Help. He helps taxpayers with IRS and state back taxes and the problems that arise from having them. His firm especially focuses on major IRS problems including tax levies (IRS wage garnishment, bank account garnishment), tax liens, penalties, tax audits and more.