We're All Subsidizing Free Lunches for America's CEOs

otherwords.org — A generation ago, on National Secretary's Day, America's top corporate executives used to take their prized office assistants out to lunch. Times change, and National Secretary's Day has become Administrative Professionals' Day. But something else has changed. These days, CEOs are getting the free lunches. Secretaries and all the rest of us are picking up the tab. And not at Burger King either. Our current tax code has everyone in America essentially subsidizing the pay of millionaire and billionaire CEOs. Deductions, tax credits, and other executive-compensation loopholes total $14.4 billion annually, the equivalent of $46 for each of America's 311 million citizens. That figure appears in "The CEO Hands in Uncle Sam's Pocket," a new report we helped write for the Institute for Policy Studies.

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