Dec. 21 (UPI) — AT&T announced it plans to give $1,000 bonuses to 200,000 employees when the Republican tax bill passed by Congress on Wednesday is signed into law.
The company said it will invest an additional $1 billion in the United States in 2018 and deliver the $1,000 bonuses to all union-represented, non-management and front-line managers if President Donald Trump signs the bill before Christmas.
“Congress, working closely with the president, took a monumental step to bring taxes paid by U.S. businesses in line with the rest of the industrialized world,” AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson said. “This tax reform will drive economic growth and create good-paying jobs. In fact, we will increase our U.S. investment and pay a special bonus to our U.S. employees.”
Congress passed the bill, which slashes corporate taxes from 35 percent to 21 percent. Trump praised Republican efforts to pass the tax overhaul Wednesday, saying, “it’s always a lot of fun when you win.”
At an event at the White House after the bill was passed Trump praised AT&T’s decision to offer its employees a raise, calling the move “pretty good.”
Fifth-Third bank also offered a one-time bonus of $1,000 for more than 13,500 of its employees, while raising its minimum wage to $15 an hour, and Boeing announced a $300 million “employee-related and charitable investment.”
While some companies have chosen to pass their windfall from the tax bill on to employees, a Bank of America-Merrill Lynch survey of more than 300 CEOs conducted last summer found most planned to spend any profits returned from abroad to pay down debt and buy back stock, USA Today reported.
“We’ve been actively returning capital in the form of growing dividend and buyback, and I’d expect us to continue that,” Amgen CEO Robert Bradway said of the tax bill in October.
