PepsiCo Paid No Tax? Neither Did These Other 33 Profitable S&P 500 Companies

Here's a big earnings-season boost some investors might overlook.  PepsiCo (PEP), Twitter (TWTR), Nvidia (NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), are just a few giant and profitable U.S. companies who paid nothing in corporate tax the past 12 months.

In fact, 34 profitable companies in the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY), reported paying no income tax expense during the most recent 12 months, through July 17.  This is according to an Investor's Business Daily analysis of data from Marketsmith and S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Those are just the extreme examples.  But falling tax rates are lifting the profits of companies across the S&P 500.  The S&P 500 is the most commonly followed index of large U.S. stocks, and the core of many portfolios.

But is this an earnings boost that can last?