Report: American companies avoid $90 billion in US taxes

America's biggest companies manage to get around paying a collective $90 billion in U.S. taxes by stashing their profits in thousands of different offshore havens, according to a report released Wednesday by the United States Public Interest Research Group.

The U.S. PIRG report comes after a senate investigation found that Apple managed to avoid paying almost any taxes on $102 billion it keeps offshore.

Though making sure businesses pay their share into the public coffers would seem to be a top priority of politicians, Dan Smith, the author of the PIRG report, said legislators find lobbying dollars are more enticing. 

"The main answer is that companies in the U.S. and throughout the world have been incredibly successful in lobbying to keep their loopholes," Smith said.

“Tax dodging is not a victimless offense. When corporations use tax havens to worm their way out of paying their full tax bill, everyone else must pick up the tab. Every dollar in taxes avoided by a large company is a dollar paid by the average taxpayer or small business owner in the form of cuts to public programs or higher taxes," the report states.

For example, the report says that Bank of America owes Uncle Sam $4.5 billion. In 2012 and 2011, the company gave out more than $5 million in political donations, according to opensecrets.org.

A spokesperson for the bank was adamant that Bank of America pays its full share of taxes, and just happens to do business in countries with lower tax rates than the United States.

"The United States has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, but that doesn't make every country with a lower tax rate a tax haven," said Jennifer Darwin, a Bank of America spokesperson. 

"We do business in almost 51 countries right now," she said, adding that the company has paid more than $50 billion in U.S. taxes over the last 10 years.

Among them, the PIRG report lists the following: "Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Singapore, Netherlands, Costa Rica, Mauritius, Ireland, Gibraltar, Bahamas, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Bermuda, Curacao, Jersey, Lebanon, Monaco, British Virgin Islands, Guernsey, Turks & Caicos Islands."

Some of those countries, like Jersey, a small island off the coast of Britain, have no corporate tax. The U.S. tax rate is around 35 percent, one of the highest in the world.

SEE A MAP OF CORPORATE TAX RATES FOR COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD

PIRG used the companies' Securities and Exchange Commission filings and government data on international tax havens to compile the data.

Tax havens are places with low taxes and strict financial secrecy laws. And while the typical image of a tax haven might be a Carribbean island, some of the biggest aiders and abbetors of tax avoidance are located in western Europe.

In 2008, 43 percent of American multinationals declared their earnings in Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Luxembourg and Bermuda, according to the report.

On a global scale, tax havens reportedly hold $32 trillion dollars, with many of those using the low or no-tax countries to stash their cash coming from the richest echelons of the poorest countries.   

An Internal Revenue Service official said that there's little the agency can do about how corporations use legal loopholes to avoid taxes.

"If you came to me with some giant corporation that within a given year paid zero taxes but it was because they took advantage of tax credits and it was all legal, who's to say there was anythng wrong with that?" the official said.

As long as the tax payer isn't doing anything illegal, the IRS remains agnostic.

"As long as you're obeying the law, the law is the law. It's its own thing."