There is an excellent article by Robert McIntyre in Multinational Monitor, November 2004, with a table of 46 Fortune 500 companies that paid no corporate tax in 2003.
"46 Corporations Paying No Income Tax in 2003 (2003 profit, in millions, in parentheses)
AT&T (2,723), Baxter (818), Boeing (1,069), Burlington Northern (1,226), Caremark RX (475), Caterpillar (485), CenterPoint Energy (660), Computer Sciences (558), Consolidated Edison (852), CSX (179), Danaher (553), Dillard's (20), Disney (1,764), Entergy (562), FPL Group (1,282), Graybar Electric (14), Ikon Office Solutions (146), Ingram Micro (9), ITT Industries (283), Kelly Services (18), KeySpan (718), Lehman Brothers (1,825), Lexmark (307), Manpower (52), Marriott International (384), NCR (103), Newell Rubbermaid (249), Nucor (79), OGE Energy (215), Pepco Holdings (138), Pfizer (6,088), Pitney Bowes (623), Principal Group (924), Public Serv. Enterprise Grp. (1,369), Reebok (32). Reliant Resources (138), Ryder (149), Saks (108), SBC Communications (8,941), Shaw Group (15), Sysco (1,264), Time Warner (4,224), Timken (52), Toys "R" Us (147), Unisys (151). Valero Energy (634)"
State corporate taxation can be a hard nut to crack, let alone for NJ in particular. An article in American Prospect from February 2005 by Robert McIntyre reveals the details of a study showing that "A shocking 71 of the 252 companies managed to pay no state income tax at all in at least one year from 2001 through 2003-despite telling their shareholders that they made $86 billion in pretax U.S. profits in those no-tax years. Some companies-such as Toys "R" Us, Boeing, AT&T, Eli Lilly, Merrill Lynch, and ITT Industries-paid no state corporate income tax over the entire three-year period."
Technically public companies need to report their current income tax payable in the Annual Report (form 10-K) which they must file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These are public documents which you can search via the free online SEC service EDGAR, http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/webusers.htm .
The income tax payable public companies must report does not need to be broken down into state and federal income tax, so there is no rule obligating companies to report to the SEC how much state income tax they pay. You can retrieve state tax payable for some companies though paid subscription databases such as Compustat, available at many university and large urban libraries. Using Compustat you could run a search for NJ companies that reported $0 for state income tax paid. However for most NJ companies this data item wasn't even reported, reflecting the fact there is no SEC rule requiring state tax disclosure.
But as your question implies, running a Compustat search or looking at a company's Annual Report doesn't even begin to tell the whole story, as the big corporations you are interested in often use offshore tax havens. A Dow Jones news article from Feb 24, 2005, reports that 40% of Fortune 500 companies purchased tax shelters from 1998-2003.
For more information consult these sources:
1. McIntyre, Robert. Freeloaders: declining corporate tax payments in the Bush years.(The Nightmare Continues). Multinational Monitor. 1 November 2004.
2. McIntyre, Robert S. State Corporate-Tax Follies. American Prospect 1 February 2005
3. Wells, Rob. Sen Levin: 40% Of Fortune 500 Cos Bought Tax Shelters. Dow Jones Newswires. 24 February 2005
4. Citizens for Tax Justice. www.ctj.org. Reputable non-profit that conducts tax research, website includes full-text of reports on corporate tax matters.
You can see if your local library has these sources and more at:
http://www.redlightgreen.org