Warren Demands Big Tech CEOs Come Clean on Cozying Up to Trump for Corporate Tax Giveaways

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren this week sent letters to five Big Tech executives—including the world's three richest individuals—to sound the alarm about their "personal and financial ties to the Trump administration" and how they "may be exploiting" those relationships for billions of dollars in corporate tax breaks.

The Massachusetts Democrat's targets include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the wealthiest person on Earth and head of President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, which is leading the administration's effort to dismantle the federal bureaucracy.

She also wrote to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta—which owns Facebook and Instagram—as well as Amazon.com founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos. As of Thursday, they are respectively the second- and third-wealthiest people on the planet. Warren's final two letters went to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet, Google's parent company.

"This $75 billion windfall is only one slice of the billions of dollars that you stand to gain from Republican efforts to lower your taxes while raising costs for working families."

Warren and other Democrats on Capitol Hill are intensely critical of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which congressional Republicans passed and Trump signed in 2017. The law was largely crafted to serve rich individuals and businesses, including by slashing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.

Now that the GOP has regained control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, its members are aiming to extend expiring provisions of the TCJA—funded by gutting programs for the working class.

As Warren's office noted in a Thursday statement, the TCJA ended "a corporate tax break known as research and development (R&D) expensing to help pay for their tax cuts for the ultrawealthy. This tax break allowed companies to deduct the total cost of their R&D expenses immediately, instead of deducting them over time, as is the standard practice in the tax code."

"This change was one of the few parts of the 2017 bill that forced companies to pay higher taxes," her office explained. "Now, corporations want to revert back to the pre-2017 rules—and not only do corporations want to apply immediate R&D expensing to future tax years, but they are also pushing to retroactively apply these deductions to 2022, 2023, and 2024."

Warren's letters cite a recent independent analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which found that retroactive application of R&D expensing alone would slash each company's tax bill by billions of dollars—specifically, Tesla: $2.5 billion; Meta: $15 billion; Amazon: $22 billion; Apple: $10 billion; and Alphabet: $24 billion.

In other words, Warren wrote, "collectively, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Tesla are projected to win $75 billion if Congress awards them retroactive R&D tax expensing—nearly double what the federal government spends on child nutrition programs each year and a fantastic return on investment for the millions you have spent lobbying on the tax fight."

"And this $75 billion windfall is only one slice of the billions of dollars that you stand to gain from Republican efforts to lower your taxes while raising costs for working families," she continued, pointing out that GOP lawmakers may "succeed in lowering the corporate tax rate even further, as President Trump has sought, or in handing out other tax giveaways to massive corporations."

Given that "American taxpayers will shoulder the burden of tax cuts" for major tech companies, "they deserve answers," argued Warren, a member of the Senate Finance Committee. She demanded responses to a list of questions by March 19.

Warren's inquiries include how much the companies are spending on lobbying for Republicans' tax legislation, and the R&D provision specifically; which trade associations, lobbying coalitions, or similar entities that they are a part of; and how much they have given, directly or indirectly, to federal elected officials who are advocating for corporate tax giveaways.

The senator also asked "exactly how much" of the retroactive tax breaks that the tech giants would put toward R&D investment and how they expect it will impact the companies' outlook for stock buybacks and executive compensation.

The potential tax law change is just one way Republican control of the federal government could benefit Big Tech. As the watchdog Public Citizen highlighted Tuesday, Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Tesla are among dozens of companies with ties to the Trump administration that could benefit from its efforts to end corporate probes and enforcement actions.