From the Huffington Post:
At a time when the federal government is starved for cash — and facing layoffs and cuts in services across the board — more and more corporations are sidestepping their traditional tax rate and keeping millions of dollars for themselves.
The number of U.S. corporations structuring their businesses in such a way that they can avoid higher taxes has skyrocketed in the past quarter century, The Wall Street Journal reports.
In 1986, about 24 percent of corporations were what’s known as nontaxable businesses — meaning the companies themselves pay no federal income taxes — instead passing on the earnings to individual investors to pay taxes on. By 2008, these businesses accounted for about 69 percent of all corporations, a designation that can save companies hundreds of millions of dollars in a single year.
Read more here.
And the way the Bush Tax Cuts were designed (to cut taxes on dividends and personal capital gains) expect this behavior to be rewarded and expand.