Compensation for the 26 CEOs whose pay surpassed their companies’ corporate tax bills averaged $20.4 million, according to the study. That average was up 23 percent over last year.
The average was also significantly higher than pay tracked by separate studies of broader groups. For instance, $10.3 million was the average 2011 direct compensation for 300 large-company CEOs tracked by pay consultants Hay Group.
To get its list, the institute compared CEO pay to current U.S. taxes paid, excluding foreign and state and local taxes that may have been paid, as well as deferred taxes that can often be far larger than current taxes paid.
The group’s rationale was that U.S. taxes paid are the closest approximation available in public documents to what companies may have actually written in their checks for last year to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
In the Chicago metro, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions also made the list.
Motorola Mobility, the cellphone maker recently acquired by technology giant Google, paid no corporate income taxes in 2011 while paying former CEO Sanjay Jha more than $47 million in total compensation, according to the report.
Motorola Solutions, which makes communications equipment for government and industrial customers, paid $2 million in federal income taxes in 2011 while paying CEO Gregory Brown $29.3 million, the study said.
Motorola Solutions declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Motorola Mobility could not be reached for comment.
Among other companies topping the institute’s list:
– Citigroup, the financial services giant, with a tax refund of $144 million based on prior losses, paid CEO Vikram Pandit $14.9 million in 2011, despite an advisory vote against it by 55 percent of shareholders.
A spokeswoman said that, while the company did not pay federal income tax in 2011, that was due to substantial losses it recorded in 2008 and 2009, a break available to all businesses in similar straits.
She also noted that Citi paid on average $3.7 billion a year in federal income taxes from 2000 to 2006, and paid other taxes last year, including more than $3 billion in payroll taxes, and that Pandit voluntarily took a salary of just $1 in 2010.
