how to lower income taxes for corporations

Assuming that you are talking about C corps.: how about lessening the income? Increasing the expenses? Writing off more §179 assets? Increasing the retirement contributions paid by the company?

Are you a tax preparer or a taxpayer?

Let Liberty Tax Service begin to do corporate tax returns

"Cringe" One of my clients (since deceased) moved away and went to Liberty Tax. Liberty wrote off nearly $30,000 in commuting mileage as "business mileage". This resulted in an audit of the year in question plus the following year where the error was repeated. Of course, once they were in there, the auditors disallowed more things, and the taxpayer had already discarded paper and had no strength to gather other evidence to prove the disallowed expenses were real. Being both impeccably honest and also dying of cancer, the taxpayer signed off on the audit and paid the bill from funds needed to cover medical expenses. The taxpayer truly owed several thousand dollars back but also paid a few thousand more that was never owed, leaving the orphaned children with significantly less cash. The taxpayer was too embarrassed to let me know about it until it was too late and the IRS auditor declined to reopen the case. Because the taxpayer was near death there was no time for me to batter the doors down and get them to reconsider. Case closes with utter finality at death. Friends don't let friends sign an audit finding until every avenue of proving real expenses has been followed.

So, stick with the honest options - reward your employees more - wages, health care, and retirement, and make use of available tax credits for R & D and energy use improvements, etc. Cut truly unnecessary costs and inefficiencies so the tax can be paid. But do not try to lower income - the most ridiculous and all too common method of tax lowering. Why throw away 2/3 of your money so you can save the 1/3 paid to the Treasury for all those libraries, schools and roads your customers/employees/commuters demand must be reliable and safe?

And use a fax machine to send your paper back to your excellent accountant/preparers instead of changing.
 

Nansea, I think MJ was being sarcastic.  How about increasing your salary?  And paying your tax preparer more?