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A K Street NW sign stands at the corner of 14th and K Streets NW in downtown Washington, D.C. on August 23, 2016. K Street is the center of the political lobbyist industry in Washington.
(Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty)
Analysis of Lobbying in 2024 Shows Clear Target: A Tax Code Forever Favorable to Corporations
"Conversations on Capitol Hill about federal tax policy were dominated by those representing corporate and wealthy interests," said one leader at Public Citizen.
Apr 10, 2025
As the GOP forges ahead with a tax plan that would primarily benefit the wealthy, the watchdog Public Citizen published a report Thursday which found that the vast majority of tax lobbyists' work in 2024 was done on behalf of corporate clients.
Although the Republican tax and spending bill is taking shape in 2025, not 2024, Public Citizen's report suggests that the general thrust of the tax bill—tax cuts that largely benefit the rich and could lead to a massive slashing of programs including Medicaid—can be explained in part due to the power of corporate lobbying.
"Conversations on Capitol Hill about federal tax policy were dominated by those representing corporate and wealthy interests," said Susan Harley, managing director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch division, in a statement Thursday. "The Trump-Republican tax proposal is a policy of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich."
Republicans are aiming to extend expiring provisions of President Donald Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts (TCJA), and also enact additional cuts. On Thursday, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved a budget blueprint that gets the GOP one step closer to securing the spending and cuts sought by Trump.
According to Public Citizen's report, most of the corporations and corporate trade associations that were the largest hirers of tax lobbyists in 2024 lobbied specifically on the TCJA.
Most of the TCJA's provisions that impact businesses, like cutting the top corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%, do not expire—though Trump has said that he would like to see the corporate tax rate further cut, to 15%.
In its analysis, Public Citizen also highlighted that a deduction for "pass-through" businesses—whose owners report their share of profits as taxable income under the individual income tax—is set to expire, though pass-through businesses on average tend to be smaller businesses than their counterparts who pay corporate income tax. Pass-through businesses include sole proprietorships, partnerships, limited liability companies, and S-corporations.
To compile its report, Public Citizen searched all federal lobbying disclosures for 2024 to compile a list of all lobbyists who indicated that they lobbied on "tax issues" (the report notes how they define lobbying on "tax issues").
More than 6,000 lobbyists swarmed Capitol Hill in 2024 to lobby on tax issues, the group found, which amounts to nearly half of all federal lobbyists. Public Citizen highlighted that by comparison, there are only 535 members of Congress.
Out of the top 100 entities hiring the most lobbyists to work on tax issues in 2024, all but two represented corporate interests, according to the report.
The corporate trade group the U.S. Chamber of Commerce topped the list with 99 lobbyists. Other top hirers of tax lobbyists included the telecommunications company Verizon and the global financial technology platform Intuit.
However, according to Public Citizen, counting the number of unique lobbyists does not reveal the "true scope" of lobbying taking place. For example, five new corporations could start lobbying on the same tax issue, but if they hired a lobbyist who had already been working on that tax issue, looking at the individual number of lobbyists would not register this increase in lobbying activity, per the report.
That means that counting the number of "unique lobbyist client relationships" reveals a more accurate picture of lobbying activity.
According to the report, clients sent more than 10,500 lobbyists to influence tax issues on average for each quarter in 2024, and more than 85% of those lobbyists represented corporate interests each quarter.
The report notes that "many of the 15% of entities categorized as not representing corporate interests are likely not lobbying against such interests. Our methodology is conservative. Many nonprofit hospital systems, for example, operate similarly to for-profit entities."
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public citizenrepublican partytax cutstax cuts and jobs actus chamber of commerceus house of representativeslobbying
As the GOP forges ahead with a tax plan that would primarily benefit the wealthy, the watchdog Public Citizen published a report Thursday which found that the vast majority of tax lobbyists' work in 2024 was done on behalf of corporate clients.
Although the Republican tax and spending bill is taking shape in 2025, not 2024, Public Citizen's report suggests that the general thrust of the tax bill—tax cuts that largely benefit the rich and could lead to a massive slashing of programs including Medicaid—can be explained in part due to the power of corporate lobbying.
"Conversations on Capitol Hill about federal tax policy were dominated by those representing corporate and wealthy interests," said Susan Harley, managing director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch division, in a statement Thursday. "The Trump-Republican tax proposal is a policy of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich."
Republicans are aiming to extend expiring provisions of President Donald Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts (TCJA), and also enact additional cuts. On Thursday, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved a budget blueprint that gets the GOP one step closer to securing the spending and cuts sought by Trump.
According to Public Citizen's report, most of the corporations and corporate trade associations that were the largest hirers of tax lobbyists in 2024 lobbied specifically on the TCJA.
Most of the TCJA's provisions that impact businesses, like cutting the top corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%, do not expire—though Trump has said that he would like to see the corporate tax rate further cut, to 15%.
In its analysis, Public Citizen also highlighted that a deduction for "pass-through" businesses—whose owners report their share of profits as taxable income under the individual income tax—is set to expire, though pass-through businesses on average tend to be smaller businesses than their counterparts who pay corporate income tax. Pass-through businesses include sole proprietorships, partnerships, limited liability companies, and S-corporations.
To compile its report, Public Citizen searched all federal lobbying disclosures for 2024 to compile a list of all lobbyists who indicated that they lobbied on "tax issues" (the report notes how they define lobbying on "tax issues").
More than 6,000 lobbyists swarmed Capitol Hill in 2024 to lobby on tax issues, the group found, which amounts to nearly half of all federal lobbyists. Public Citizen highlighted that by comparison, there are only 535 members of Congress.
Out of the top 100 entities hiring the most lobbyists to work on tax issues in 2024, all but two represented corporate interests, according to the report.
The corporate trade group the U.S. Chamber of Commerce topped the list with 99 lobbyists. Other top hirers of tax lobbyists included the telecommunications company Verizon and the global financial technology platform Intuit.
However, according to Public Citizen, counting the number of unique lobbyists does not reveal the "true scope" of lobbying taking place. For example, five new corporations could start lobbying on the same tax issue, but if they hired a lobbyist who had already been working on that tax issue, looking at the individual number of lobbyists would not register this increase in lobbying activity, per the report.
That means that counting the number of "unique lobbyist client relationships" reveals a more accurate picture of lobbying activity.
According to the report, clients sent more than 10,500 lobbyists to influence tax issues on average for each quarter in 2024, and more than 85% of those lobbyists represented corporate interests each quarter.
The report notes that "many of the 15% of entities categorized as not representing corporate interests are likely not lobbying against such interests. Our methodology is conservative. Many nonprofit hospital systems, for example, operate similarly to for-profit entities."
From Your Site Articles
As the GOP forges ahead with a tax plan that would primarily benefit the wealthy, the watchdog Public Citizen published a report Thursday which found that the vast majority of tax lobbyists' work in 2024 was done on behalf of corporate clients.
Although the Republican tax and spending bill is taking shape in 2025, not 2024, Public Citizen's report suggests that the general thrust of the tax bill—tax cuts that largely benefit the rich and could lead to a massive slashing of programs including Medicaid—can be explained in part due to the power of corporate lobbying.
"Conversations on Capitol Hill about federal tax policy were dominated by those representing corporate and wealthy interests," said Susan Harley, managing director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch division, in a statement Thursday. "The Trump-Republican tax proposal is a policy of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich."
Republicans are aiming to extend expiring provisions of President Donald Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts (TCJA), and also enact additional cuts. On Thursday, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved a budget blueprint that gets the GOP one step closer to securing the spending and cuts sought by Trump.
According to Public Citizen's report, most of the corporations and corporate trade associations that were the largest hirers of tax lobbyists in 2024 lobbied specifically on the TCJA.
Most of the TCJA's provisions that impact businesses, like cutting the top corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%, do not expire—though Trump has said that he would like to see the corporate tax rate further cut, to 15%.
In its analysis, Public Citizen also highlighted that a deduction for "pass-through" businesses—whose owners report their share of profits as taxable income under the individual income tax—is set to expire, though pass-through businesses on average tend to be smaller businesses than their counterparts who pay corporate income tax. Pass-through businesses include sole proprietorships, partnerships, limited liability companies, and S-corporations.
To compile its report, Public Citizen searched all federal lobbying disclosures for 2024 to compile a list of all lobbyists who indicated that they lobbied on "tax issues" (the report notes how they define lobbying on "tax issues").
More than 6,000 lobbyists swarmed Capitol Hill in 2024 to lobby on tax issues, the group found, which amounts to nearly half of all federal lobbyists. Public Citizen highlighted that by comparison, there are only 535 members of Congress.
Out of the top 100 entities hiring the most lobbyists to work on tax issues in 2024, all but two represented corporate interests, according to the report.
The corporate trade group the U.S. Chamber of Commerce topped the list with 99 lobbyists. Other top hirers of tax lobbyists included the telecommunications company Verizon and the global financial technology platform Intuit.
However, according to Public Citizen, counting the number of unique lobbyists does not reveal the "true scope" of lobbying taking place. For example, five new corporations could start lobbying on the same tax issue, but if they hired a lobbyist who had already been working on that tax issue, looking at the individual number of lobbyists would not register this increase in lobbying activity, per the report.
That means that counting the number of "unique lobbyist client relationships" reveals a more accurate picture of lobbying activity.
According to the report, clients sent more than 10,500 lobbyists to influence tax issues on average for each quarter in 2024, and more than 85% of those lobbyists represented corporate interests each quarter.
The report notes that "many of the 15% of entities categorized as not representing corporate interests are likely not lobbying against such interests. Our methodology is conservative. Many nonprofit hospital systems, for example, operate similarly to for-profit entities."
From Your Site Articles
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