From the Wall Street Journal:
Several of the biggest U.S. life insurance companies are seeking a piece of the taxpayer-funded $700 billion federal bailout program, but pay little in income taxes themselves, securities filings show.
Consider Prudential Financial Inc., which last week announced that it is seeking an unspecified amount of aid through the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Despite reporting pretax profits to shareholders of nearly $25 billion over the past decade, Prudential has paid just $1.3 billion in taxes to federal, state and foreign governments in that period, filings show, for an effective tax rate of 5.1%.
