The Dell Technologies NOligarchy Profile
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Dell Technologies scores 30.2 out of 100 on the NOligarchy index — one of the lowest marks in its peer group, placing this computer and electronics giant squarely in accountability-concern territory. Dell reported $113.5 billion in annual revenue in its most recent fiscal year. Its United States revenue of $63.58 billion — the “United States revenue” segment — represents 14.13% of the Computer & Electronic Product Manufacturing market, making its spending choices consequential at national scale.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
11.0
Wealth Extraction
47.7
Playing by the Rules
43.1
Score history — 23 quarters
Tier bands show where each quarter's score falls — no numeric y-axis needed. The dashed ring marks the year-over-year comparison point. Tap any quarter but the first to see its pillar breakdown.
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Political Access Grade: 11.01/100. From Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 — the two-year tracking period covering eight quarters — Dell poured $14.03 million into federal lobbying, deployed five outside lobbying firms, and distributed more than $1.72 million through its Political Action Committee (PAC). Every dollar of that influence spend flowed toward the federal policymakers who set the rules on taxes, trade, defense procurement, and artificial intelligence — the same rules that shape Dell’s profit margins.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 47.51/100. Dell handed more than $14.5 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends across its three most recently reported fiscal years, while its median worker took home $78,796. That deliberate choice to concentrate earnings at the top of the ownership ladder defines this pillar.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 43.07/100. A single False Claims Act settlement with the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2024 resulted in a $2.3 million civil penalty — a fine that amounted to roughly three hours of Dell’s fiscal year 2026 buyback pace.
Dell ranks 11th out of 12 companies in the Computer & Electronic Product Manufacturing sector, where the average NOligarchy score is 61.4. Dell’s score trails that benchmark by more than 31 points, making it one of the clearest accountability outliers in a sector that already draws heavy scrutiny. For higher-scoring places to shop, see the Better Alternatives section below.
The Bottom Line: $14.5 Billion to Shareholders, $14 Million to Lobbyists, and a Median Worker Earning $78,796
Dell Technologies reported $113.5 billion in annual revenue in its most recent fiscal year. The sharpest choices embedded in that revenue become visible when you look at where the earnings went: more than $14.5 billion returned to shareholders through buybacks and dividends across three fiscal years, $14.03 million channeled to federal lobbyists over the two-year period, and $2.3 million paid to settle a federal fraud case. The median Dell worker — the person keeping that machine running on the factory floor, in the data center, and on the support line — took home $78,796 for the year. Understanding Dell’s power means understanding who the company decided to reward, and who it did not.
$15.8 million in political spending
Statue of Liberty · 151 ft
0.4×
Stacked as $100 bills, Dell Technologies's $15.8 million in political spending rises 57 feet — 0.4× the height of the Statue of Liberty (the statue alone, 151 ft).
$14 Million in Lobbying and a Seat at Every Table That Matters
Dell is not a quiet company in Washington. Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings show the company spent $14.03 million on federal lobbying from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 — $3.51 million in 2024, $6.79 million in 2025, and $3.73 million across the first two quarters of 2026. That is an average of nearly $1.75 million per quarter, sustained consistently, directed at both chambers of Congress, the White House Office, the Department of Commerce, the Department of State, the Treasury Department, and the U.S. Trade Representative, among others.
The single most active issue area was taxation, appearing in 30 separate filings. Dell’s lobbyists referenced H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Ensuring Better Interest Treatment and Deductibility Act (S. 4221/H.R. 8101), and the American Innovation and R&D Competitiveness Act of 2025 (H.R. 1990/S.1639) — each touching corporate tax provisions, international tax structures, and research-and-development incentives that determine how much of Dell’s $113.5 billion in revenue actually flows to the government. This is not accidental: Dell holds a Singapore tax holiday that cut its effective rate by 6.1 percentage points in its most recent fiscal year, and sustained engagement on the tax code is the machinery that defends and extends that kind of structural advantage.
Trade was the second-most active front, appearing in 18 filings. Lobbyists referenced the Chip Security Act (H.R. 3447/S. 1705) and monitored tariffs, export controls, the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), and supply-chain legislation. For a company that depends on global component sourcing to build servers, laptops, and networking equipment, the difference between a favorable and unfavorable trade regime can be measured in billions. Filings also cited the Decoupling from Foreign Adversarial Battery Dependence Act (H.R. 1166) and the Sanctioning Russia Act (S. 1241/H.R. 2548), indicating lobbyists were tracking geopolitical risk directly tied to supply chains.
On defense — 13 filings — lobbyists referenced the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027 (H.R. 8800) and the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 (Pub. L. 118-31), while engaging on DOD technology modernization, procurement contracts, and AI and cybersecurity programs. Dell is a major federal contractor; the dollars in those authorization bills flow, in part, to Dell’s own revenue. In telecommunications, filings referenced the AI Overwatch Act (H.R. 6875), the Remote Access Security Act (H.R. 2683), and the Chip Security Act while tracking 5G, data privacy, and AI policy — all areas where federal regulation could expand or constrain Dell’s product markets. On intellectual property, lobbyists cited the RESTORE Patent Rights Act of 2025 (S.708/H.R. 1574) and engaged on patent litigation reform and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office operations — issues that shape how Dell defends its own portfolio and guards against challenges from competitors.
Dell deployed five outside lobbying firms to carry much of this work. Two share client rosters with significant overlap: Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld simultaneously lobbies for Ralph Lauren Corporation, PVH Corp, and Shein, while Greenberg Traurig, LLP also works for Alibaba Group Holding Limited. When the same firm walks the halls of Congress for multiple large corporate clients, the relationships and access it cultivates become shared resources — even when the clients’ names are filed separately.
Shared Lobbying Exposure
Dell Technologies
client
AKIN GUMP STRAUSS HAUER & FELD
lobbying firm
AT&T
also a client
KKR & Co. Inc.
also a client
PVH Corp
also a client
+2 more
clients
BROWNSTEIN HYATT FARBER SCHRECK, LLP also lobbies for Apollo Global Management, Inc., Ares Management Corp
GREENBERG TRAURIG, LLP also lobbies for Alibaba Group Holding Limited
Why it matters: the same firm argues Dell Technologies’s case and its rivals’ — one hire buys a web of shared access that can’t be seen from outside. This network worsens Dell Technologies’s political-access score (see methodology for the exact factor).
Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show Dell’s PAC distributed $1,717,800 over the two-year period, splitting contributions 55.2% to Democratic recipients and 44.8% to Republican recipients. Dell’s executives also personally contributed $40,135 to federal campaigns — an additional avenue of political access flowing from the company’s leadership ranks.
Dell Technologies's PAC gave $664,800 to Democrats and $538,500 to Republicans — a 55.2% / 44.8% split that buys access to whichever party wins.
55.2%
44.8%
Democrats · $664,800
Republicans · $538,500
ACCESS-BUYER PENALTY APPLIED
Taken together, Dell’s influence infrastructure — $14.03 million in lobbying, five outside firms, and a $1.72 million PAC — is the machinery of a company that has decided the rules of the game are worth paying to shape.
$14.5 Billion to Shareholders While the Median Worker Earns $78,796
Dell has been systematic about directing its earnings toward the top of the ownership ladder. According to SEC 10-K filings, the company spent $6.01 billion on stock buybacks in fiscal year 2026, $2.59 billion in fiscal year 2025, and $2.08 billion in fiscal year 2024 — a combined $10.68 billion across those three years. Buybacks are a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses. Alongside those buybacks, Dell paid $1.46 billion in dividends in fiscal year 2026, $1.28 billion in fiscal year 2025, and $1.07 billion in fiscal year 2024 — another $3.81 billion funneled to the investor class. Combined, that is more than $14.5 billion handed to shareholders over three fiscal years. The wealthiest 10% of Americans own 93% of the stock market, so the overwhelming majority of that $14.5 billion landed in already-wealthy hands.
The Missed Raise: Dell’s employee headcount is not publicly disclosed in the available filings, so a precise per-worker raise calculation cannot be made. What is visible is the scale: $6 billion in buybacks alone in a single fiscal year — a sum that dwarfs anything distributed to frontline earnings. The workers who designed, assembled, sold, and supported Dell’s products across that year received none of it.
The Dividend Factor: Dell did not abandon traditional investor payouts in favor of buybacks — it ran both simultaneously. The $3.81 billion in dividends across three years was paid on top of, not instead of, the buyback program. Together, the two mechanisms ensured that shareholders captured far more of Dell’s earnings than the people doing the day-to-day labor. The company had the financial capacity to sustain both dividend payments and a meaningful wage program. It simply chose not to redirect any portion toward the workforce.
The CEO Pay Gap: The CEO pay ratio is 43:1, per the SEC DEF 14A. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $3.4 million — while the median Dell employee earned $78,796. By Fortune 500 standards, 43:1 sits on the lower end of the scale.
CEO — MEDIAN-PAY MARKER
JANUARY
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passes the median employee’s full annual pay
9:22 AM · January 7
43× the median employee’s pay
At 43:1, Dell Technologies's CEO earns the median employee's entire annual pay by 9:22 AM on January 7.
The Buyback-Bonus Loop: Buybacks reduce the number of shares in circulation, which mechanically pushes Earnings Per Share (EPS) higher even when the underlying business has not grown. When EPS rises, the performance metrics written into executive bonus agreements trigger payouts — meaning the same leadership that approved the buyback program stood to personally benefit from it. The 43:1 pay gap reflects a compensation package built in part around those very metrics.
Tax Strategy: Dell paid an effective tax rate of 18.3% — 2.7 percentage points below the 21% federal statutory rate that Congress set, and 0.85 percentage points above the 17.45% median for companies in the same sector.
The company’s 10-K discloses that the single largest rate-reducing item was a -6.1 percentage point benefit worth $447 million, derived from a reduced tax rate in Singapore, where a subsidiary operates under a tax holiday in effect until January 31, 2029. Beyond Singapore, other foreign tax effects shaved an additional 2.5 percentage points from the bill. The 10-K also notes that in fiscal year 2025, the lapse of certain U.S. statutes of limitations produced a one-time -8.5 percentage point benefit worth $400 million — a windfall from the expiration of the IRS’s window to challenge older filings.
Dell chose to pay 2.7 percentage points less than the rate Congress set. That gap is not an accounting accident — it is a structural decision that shifts real tax burden off Dell’s balance sheet and onto everyone else. On top of that, Dell holds Unrecognized Tax Benefits equal to 14% of its pre-tax income — contested deductions it has claimed on its taxes that the IRS has not yet agreed are valid. The company also discloses it is actively contesting significant IRS proposed adjustments for fiscal years 2018–2019, while remaining under examination for fiscal years 2020–2022, with net unrecognized tax benefits of $1.1 billion as of January 30, 2026.
A $2.3 Million False Claims Act Settlement — The Cost of About Three Hours of Buybacks
Dell’s legal record over the two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 contains one case, but it is a pointed one. In 2024, the company paid a $2.3 million civil penalty to resolve a False Claims Act matter brought by the DOJ’s Civil Division. The False Claims Act exists to protect the federal government — and by extension, taxpayers — from fraud in government contracting. Dell is a major seller of hardware and services to federal agencies, which makes a settlement under this statute consequential for the integrity of public procurement.
To put the fine in scale: at Dell’s fiscal year 2026 buyback pace of $6.01 billion, $2.3 million represents roughly three hours of shareholder-return spending. At that ratio, the penalty functions less as a deterrent and more as a routine cost of doing business.
Dell ranks 2nd out of 12 companies in the Computer & Electronic Product Manufacturing sector by penalty severity — a position that, combined with its score near the bottom of the sector, marks it as one of the more consequential accountability outliers among its peers.
The Subsidy Flip: While the DOJ was extracting $2.3 million from Dell for violations of federal contracting law, state and local governments were simultaneously sending public money in the other direction. Good Jobs First Subsidy Tracker records show Dell collected $1,281,355 across five grants between 2024 and 2025. The largest single award was $325,239 in 2024. That is: the same year Dell settled a federal fraud case, public funds were flowing to one of the most cash-rich technology companies on earth.
EXHIBIT — ONE TEACHER-YEAR AT A TIME
18 years of an average teacher’s salary
The $1.3 million in public subsidies Dell Technologies collected would fund 18 years of an average teacher's salary.