So you really think our government should be paying companies tax returns to operate in this country?
Nobody's claiming that the government is somehow "paying" AT&T to do business here, and if they were claiming that they'd be an idiot. When you pay your personal income taxes, if you have too much withheld, do you expect to get the overpayment back? If you made a mistake and correct it, do you expect to pay or receive the difference to the corrected amount? The logical answer says yes, so welcome to AT&T's world. Due to prior year overpayments and corrections they paid too much in 2011 and got their money back.
Why are corporations even paying taxes or getting returns to begin with?
Because it's part of the morals and ethos of pretty much every civilized nation on the planet that business entities are "citizens" of society, benefit from its contributions, and consume its resources and so should contribute to its operation.
They aren't people. Maybe if the people in this country actually paid a decent tax rate at every income level and there were no loopholes or way to dodge paying them, then we could get rid of the idiotic idea of taxing businesses. Taxing the company and taxing the business seems a lot like double dipping.
That's pointless. Not only is there little or no mathematical difference whether a business and its owner each pay 5% or whether just the owner pays 10% (which is what you're advocating) but by removing the distinction you eliminate fairly effective social and economic stimulus measures such as business capital being tax deferred to spur investment, which grows employment and GDP/GNP.
Either way, there is no reason for a company with billions in revenue to get hundred of millions back in returns, even if they did pay it and depreciation and "operating losses" created a loophole for them to get that money back.
There's no reasoning with that. You've just impliedly taken the position that taxes should be based on revenue regardless of profitability and changes in circumstances are irrelevant so long as the tax code fulfills your warped sense of "fairness". You went from advocating no business taxes to advocating that businesses pay out the butt in good times and then pay out the butt in bad times.
I work in an industry where the government has tried to implement such a "no lose" situation for itself and frankly, we're preparing for it to be an unmitigated financial disaster (and I work for a government!).