Staying with our current theme of taxes and corporate America, let me direct your attention toExecutive Excess 2008: How Average Taxpayers Subsidize Runaway Pay -- a report from Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. On Wednesday, I wrote that even though it's wrong to simply state that two thirds of corporations do not pay corporate income taxes, heavy criticism can be leveled at the tax code because it's rigged such that a lot of profits escape taxation. This IPS/UFE report takes aim at tax laws that encourage stratospheric executive compensation while costing some $20 billion annually. Estimated Annual Cost to Taxpayers of the Five Most Direct Tax Subsidies for Excessive Executive Pay Preferential capital gains treatment of carried interest $2,661,000,000 Unlimited deferred compensation $80,600,000 Offshore deferred compensation $2,086,000,000 Unlimited tax deductibility of executive pay $5,249,475,000 Stock option accounting double standard $10,000,000,000 Total $20,077,075,000 The report notes that 30 years ago, the average American CEO was paid some 30 to 40 times that of the average American worker. In 2007, however, CEOs were compensated at a rate 344 times greater than that of the average worker. While the explosion in the pay gap has many causes, federal tax law has played role. And, aside from abetting obscene executive pay, the $20 billion in forgone revenue could be put to other uses. All subsidies involve trade-offs. Each time we allow executives and their employers to avoid paying taxes they would otherwise owe, we reduce government's capacity to deliver needed services that taxpayers and their families would otherwise receive. Tax subsidies for excessive executive pay represent a particularly indefensible waste of government resources. At the moment, no serious observer of the American scene is arguing that top business executives, as a group, earn too little in compensation. So why then should government, in any manner, be encouraging corporations and investment firms to pay their executives even more?