The biggest U.S. companies on the S&P 500 spent more than $1 trillion on stock buybacks and dividends in 2024

"Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet are the five largest corporations by market cap, with the value of their combined shares totaling more than $16 trillion. These firms each pull in multiple billions of dollars in profit annually, and so pay tens of billions of dollars in annual taxes, too. But like other corporate giants in the S&P 500, the companies are also spending massive amounts on shareholder payouts, funneling trillions of dollars to wealthy shareholders through stock buybacks and shareholder dividends."

"Over the past five years, those five largest companies spent more than $1 trillion on stock buybacks and dividends, according to a new analysis from Oxfam-more than five times what they paid in federal taxes over the same time period. Looking at the entire S&P 500, the largest U.S. companies spent nearly $1.6 trillion combined on stock buybacks and dividends in 2024 alone. That's triple the income of the poorest 27 million U.S. households combined, which totals $498 billion."

""There's been an unprecedented level of shareholder payouts in recent years," says Rebecca Riddell, senior policy lead for economic justice at Oxfam. That includes both dividends paid out to shareholders and also stock buybacks, which is when companies buy their own stocks, thereby making their stock price go up. (Since many executives also have stock-based compensation packages, this also increases their pay.)"

Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet together hold more than $16 trillion in combined market value. These firms earn multiple billions in annual profit and pay tens of billions in annual federal taxes. Over the past five years those five companies spent more than $1 trillion on stock buybacks and dividends—over five times their federal tax payments in the same period. The largest S&P 500 firms spent nearly $1.6 trillion on buybacks and dividends in 2024 alone, an amount triple the combined income of the poorest 27 million U.S. households. Buybacks raise stock prices and boost executive pay. Corporate tax revenues have declined since the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Read at Fast Company