The Garmin NOligarchy Profile
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Garmin earned a NOligarchy Score of 57.09 out of 100 — a number that tells a mixed story. The company runs a clean legal record and keeps its lobbying footprint modest, but a yawning gap between what the CEO takes home and what the median worker earns, paired with more than $1.2 billion in dividend payments channeled to shareholders in just the last two fiscal years, drags the overall score down sharply.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
34.6
Wealth Extraction
61.9
Playing by the Rules
100.0
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: 34.61/100. This score reflects real spending — $600,000 in federal lobbying and $162,500 in Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period), backed by a revolving door of former Congressional insiders who now carry Garmin’s agenda to Capitol Hill.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 61.46/100. This mid-range score reflects a CEO pay ratio that dwarfs what the median Garmin worker earns, alongside a consistent pattern of returning cash to shareholders through dividends and buybacks while the employee headcount needed to calculate an exact per-worker raise is not publicly disclosed.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 100.0/100. A perfect score: no recorded regulatory fines, no violations on the public docket, and no public subsidies received during this period.
Garmin ranks 8th out of 12 companies in the Computer & Electronic Product Manufacturing sector. The sector average score is 61.4 — Garmin trails that benchmark by about 4 points, placing it below the industry standard on accountability despite a spotless compliance record.
The Bottom Line: A Clean Courtroom Record Masks a Deep Pay Divide and a Steady Stream of Shareholder Cash
Garmin generated $7.2 billion in annual revenue according to its SEC EDGAR 10-K (CIK 0001121788), yet the company’s most consequential choices happen not in the courtroom but in the boardroom. Over the two-year tracking period, Garmin poured $162,500 into PAC contributions and channeled $600,000 through Washington lobbyists — small sums by corporate standards, but amplified by an army of former Congressional staffers who know exactly which doors to knock on. Meanwhile, the CEO collected compensation that dwarfs the median worker’s salary by a factor of 263, and the company directed more than $1.2 billion in dividends to shareholders across the last two fiscal years alone — money that flowed upward while the workforce’s share of the value they create remains conspicuously undisclosed.
Twelve Insiders, a Fading Budget, and a Seat at Every Table That Matters
Garmin is not a household name in Washington the way a defense contractor or a pharmaceutical giant might be. But the company has quietly assembled a lobbying infrastructure that punches well above its size — spending $600,000 on federal lobbying across Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 according to Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings. That works out to roughly $75,000 per quarter — a presence that has run consistently but tapered toward the end of the period, dropping from $80,000–$90,000 per quarter in late 2024 to $60,000 per quarter by mid-2026. In Washington, even a receding presence still keeps the doors open.
Garmin’s lobbyists filed issues across eight distinct policy areas, and the breadth of those filings reflects exactly how many corners of government touch the company’s products. Taxation dominated, with 17 separate filings — not surprising for a company incorporated in Switzerland that sells heavily into the United States and has active interests in how cross-border income is taxed. Defense appeared 8 times: Garmin makes aviation electronics, marine navigation systems, and GPS devices used by the military, so how the Pentagon defines “right to repair” for equipment it buys matters directly to the company’s service revenue model. Railroads and trucking each generated multiple filings focused on retail cargo theft — a legitimate concern for a company whose high-value electronics move through supply chains vulnerable to organized theft rings.
Lobbyists specifically cited the United States-Taiwan Expedited Double-Tax Relief Act — referenced 4 times across 118th Congress filings — a bill that would ease the tax burden on income flows between the U.S. and Taiwan. Garmin manufactures in Taiwan, making this legislation directly relevant to its cost structure. A companion measure addressing the same taxation issue for Taiwan residents earning U.S.-source income (H.R. 33, 119th Congress) appeared in the most recent filings, referenced once, and is currently awaiting Senate Finance Committee action. Filings also cited the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024 (118th Congress, H.R. 7024) four times — a bill containing business expensing and research tax credit provisions relevant to technology manufacturers.
On cargo theft, lobbyists in the trucking and railroad issue areas cited two 119th Congress measures: the CORRUPT Act (H.R. 5988), focused on crime and law enforcement, and the Hemp Planting Predictability Act (H.R. 7024) — each referenced 4 times in that context. One enacted law also appeared in filings: An act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of H. Con. Res. 14 — the sweeping fiscal legislation that became Public Law 119-21 on July 4, 2025 — was cited once in connection with cargo theft and telecommunications issues. On the defense side, filings repeatedly referenced the National Defense Authorization Act in connection with right-to-repair provisions. Lobbying Disclosure Act filings record that these issues were engaged — not what outcome Garmin sought.
On top of the $600,000 in lobbying, Garmin’s PAC handed $162,500 to federal candidates according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records — with 71.9% directed to Republican candidates ($102,500) and 28.1% to Democrats ($40,000). Garmin executives also made $59,503 in individual political contributions tracked through FEC filings.
What makes this apparatus disproportionately powerful relative to its dollar size is the people behind it. Twelve of Garmin’s 19 registered lobbyists previously held government positions. Among them: a former Legislative Assistant and Deputy Director of Legislative Affairs in the office of then-Vice President Mike Pence; a former House Ways and Means Committee Majority Tax Counsel who helped write the tax code Garmin now lobbies on; a former Deputy Chief of Staff to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid; and multiple former senior staffers on the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Senate Commerce Committee, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the Senate Armed Services Committee. One lobbying firm Garmin retained — Cornerstone Government Affairs — also lobbies for Ares Management Corp and Target Corporation, creating a shared Washington footprint across financial services, retail, and technology sectors.
Shared Lobbying Exposure
Garmin
client
CORNERSTONE GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS, INC.
lobbying firm
Ares Management Corp
also a client
Target Corporation
also a client
Why it matters: the same firm argues Garmin’s case and its rivals’ — one hire buys a web of shared access that can’t be seen from outside. This network worsens Garmin’s political-access score (see methodology for the exact factor).
These are not generalist advocates. They are former insiders with direct relationships at precisely the agencies and committees Garmin’s filings show it targeting: the House of Representatives (contacted 53 times), the Senate (50 times), the Department of the Treasury (6 times), and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) (twice).
FEDERAL CONTACT LOG
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
53
≈ every 9th business day
SENATE
50
≈ every 10th business day
Treasury, Dept of
6
≈ every 83rd business day
Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
2
≈ every 250th business day
4 federal bodies named in federal lobbying filings · 2024-Q3–2026-Q2
Between 2024-Q3 and 2026-Q2, Garmin was named in lobbying filings reaching 4 federal bodies — from HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES to SENATE.
$1.2 Billion to Shareholders in Two Years, a 263-to-1 Pay Gap, and a Workforce Whose Size Is Never Disclosed
Garmin’s CEO pay ratio is 263:1, the 3-year average of Compensation Actually Paid, according to the SEC DEF 14A. The CEO’s three-year average package was about $12.2 million. The median Garmin employee earned $46,356 in fiscal year 2025 — roughly what it takes to cover rent, groceries, and utilities in most mid-sized American cities, with little left over. The executive at the top of that pyramid collected enough to pay 263 such salaries simultaneously.
CEO — MEDIAN-PAY MARKER
JANUARY
9:00
10:00
11:00
12:00
1:00
2:00
3:00
4:00
4:55 PM — a median year, earned
5:00
passes the median employee’s full annual pay
4:55 PM · January 1
263× the median employee’s pay
At 263:1, Garmin's CEO earns the median employee's entire annual pay by 4:55 PM on the first workday of the year.
The shareholder payout record tells its own story. Garmin paid out $572.4 million in dividends in fiscal 2024 and $663.9 million in fiscal 2025 — more than $1.2 billion in just two years — according to SEC 10-K filings. These are traditional dividends, not buybacks: cash sent directly to shareholders, the wealthiest 10% of Americans who own 93% of the stock market.
Alongside those dividends, Garmin also executed a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses — spending $42.1 million in fiscal 2024 and $57.2 million in fiscal 2025 on share repurchases, per SEC 10-K filings.
Because Garmin does not publicly disclose its total employee headcount in the filings used here, a precise per-worker raise calculation is not possible. What can be said plainly is this: $99 million in buybacks across those two fiscal years — compared against $1.2 billion in dividends paid out over the same span — reveals a company that did not choose between rewarding investors and rewarding workers. It chose both investor channels simultaneously, and left worker earnings to speak for themselves at $46,356.
The dividend picture makes the priorities even starker. In fiscal 2025, Garmin paid $663.9 million to shareholders through dividends and simultaneously spent $57.2 million on share repurchases. The dividend payout alone represents 9.2% of annual revenue — nearly one dollar in every ten that flows through the company goes directly to shareholders. That is a deliberate choice, made year after year, that concentrates returns at the top of the ownership structure while the workforce’s compensation floor sits at $46,356.
Buybacks reduce the supply of outstanding shares, which lifts Earnings Per Share (EPS) even when the underlying business produces the same profit. That lifted EPS then triggers performance bonuses for the executives who approved the repurchase — including a CEO whose three-year average package reached about $12.2 million. The mechanism is self-reinforcing: the people who benefit most from buybacks are the same people who authorize them.
A Clean Record on the Public Docket
Garmin’s compliance record is, by the public evidence available, spotless. No regulatory fines, no recorded violations, no penalties appear in the data covering Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 — the two-year tracking period. In a sector populated by companies that routinely treat fines as a rounding error on quarterly earnings, that absence is genuinely notable.
No public subsidies were received during this period either — Garmin did not collect government grants or tax credits through any program tracked in the public record here.
A perfect Playing by the Rules score of 100 out of 100 is the rarest outcome in corporate accountability tracking. Whatever operational, legal, and regulatory choices Garmin made during this period, none of them resulted in a recorded fine or a government payment flowing the other way. That is the one unambiguous bright spot in this profile.