The Verizon NOligarchy Profile
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Verizon earns a NOligarchy Score of 15.02 out of 100 — placing it 4th out of 5 companies tracked in the Wired and wireless telecommunications carriers (except satellite) sector, well below the sector average of 35.7. The data behind that score tells a story of a $138 billion telecommunications giant that poured more than $26 million into federal lobbying from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period), channeled an additional $2.03 million through its Political Action Committee (PAC), paid its chief executive 248 times what a median worker earned, and accumulated more than $35.4 million in regulatory fines — all while operating as a dominant carrier controlling 21.57% of the U.S. wired and wireless telecommunications market.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
3.1
Wealth Extraction
34.2
Playing by the Rules
15.0
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: 3.11/100. Near the absolute floor of the scale, this reflects one of the most active political footprints in the dataset: $26.14 million in federal lobbying expenditures, $2.03 million in PAC contributions, and a network of fourteen former government insiders deployed across multiple issue areas stretching from spectrum policy to tax law to national security.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 34.23/100. This reflects a 248:1 CEO pay gap against a median worker salary of $154,605. No stock buybacks are recorded for the most recent fiscal year — the executive compensation chasm alone drives the score into the lower quarter.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 8.19/100. Twelve enforcement actions totaling $35.4 million in penalties — spanning privacy breaches, consumer protection failures, hazardous waste, employment discrimination, and workplace safety — produce a score near the bottom of the scale. Verizon ranks 2nd out of 5 companies in its sector for total penalty volume.
Verizon ranks 4th out of 5 companies among companies sharing its federal industry classification — Wired and wireless telecommunications carriers (except satellite) — against a sector average NOligarchy Score of 35.7. Verizon trails that average by more than 20 points, meaning it falls short of even the ordinary accountability baseline that its industry peers clear. Since Verizon scores below 50 and better-scored alternatives exist, readers can find higher-scoring carriers in the Better Alternatives section below.
The Bottom Line: A $26 Million Lobbying Machine, a $35 Million Fine Tab, and 248 Paychecks of Distance Between the Top and the Middle
Verizon pulled in $138.2 billion in annual revenue — more money in a single year than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of more than 100 countries — and chose to direct more than $26 million of it toward lobbying the federal government on spectrum rules, tax law, broadband funding, and content regulation. In the same period, regulators found the company in violation of the law 12 times, collecting $35.4 million in fines that amount to a fraction of a single quarter’s earnings. Meanwhile, the person running the company pocketed a package 248 times larger than what the median Verizon worker earned. The sharpest imbalance in this profile is the combination: a company that spends heavily to shape the rules it operates under, consistently falls short of the rules already on the books, and concentrates financial reward at the very top of the organization.
$28.2 million in political spending
Statue of Liberty · 151 ft
0.7×
Stacked as $100 bills, Verizon's $28.2 million in political spending rises 101 feet — 0.7× the height of the Statue of Liberty (the statue alone, 151 ft).
$26 Million to Stay Ahead of the Regulators
Verizon is among the most active corporate lobbyists in the telecommunications industry. According to Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings, the company channeled $26,140,000 in federal lobbying expenditures across the two-year tracking period — averaging roughly $3.27 million per quarter, and accelerating sharply in 2025, when it deployed $13.24 million compared to $6.01 million in 2024.
That spending targeted the full breadth of Washington’s power structure. Verizon’s lobbyists filed disclosures showing contact with the House of Representatives and the Senate (46 filings each), the Executive Office of the President (21 contacts), the White House Office (15), the Department of Commerce (14), the Department of the Treasury (7), and even the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the National Security Council. For a telecommunications carrier, appearances before the EPA and DOJ signal that Verizon’s regulatory concerns extend well beyond phone towers and internet speeds.
The Issues
Telecommunications was the dominant issue area — 16 separate filings — covering spectrum policy, broadband deployment, cybersecurity, privacy, and network resiliency. LDA filings referenced dozens of bills, including the Spectrum Pipeline Act of 2025 (H.R. 651), cited across multiple quarters, the Public Safety Communications Act (H.R. 1519), and the Kids Online Safety Act (S. 1748). Lobbyists also referenced discussions on data privacy legislation, artificial intelligence policy, and the Frontier Communications merger review. The connection to Verizon’s bottom line is direct: spectrum licenses are among the company’s most valuable assets, and any legislation reshaping spectrum auction rules or broadband subsidy allocation changes the competitive landscape for a carrier controlling 21.57% of the sector’s revenue.
Budget and Appropriations was the second most active area, with 12 filings. Disclosures show Verizon’s lobbyists engaged on broadband funding provisions inside the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and on the 119th Congress budget reconciliation process — both carrying billions in potential infrastructure subsidies that Verizon and its competitors vie to capture.
Taxation was the subject of 8 filings, with disclosures referencing discussions on 100% expensing bonus depreciation, research and development cost deductibility, the taxation of spectrum licenses, the Corporate Minimum Tax, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Pillar Two minimum tax rules. One filing cited the American Innovation and R&D Competitiveness Act of 2025 (H.R. 1990) specifically. These are not abstract policy questions — they directly affect how much of Verizon’s $138 billion in revenue ends up as taxable income.
Veterans issues surfaced in two filings, covering military-to-civilian work transition programs — a policy area with lower financial stakes but high reputational value for a company that markets heavily to military families and first responders.
The Inside Track
Verizon didn’t merely hire lobbyists — it hired fourteen people with documented government experience to staff its influence operation. They include a former Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs, a former Deputy Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs who also served as Senior Director for Legislative Affairs on the National Security Council, a former Chief of Staff to a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner, and multiple former Senate legislative directors and aides. One lobbyist, ROBIN COLWELL, passed through six government positions before joining corporate lobbying — including Chief Counsel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Chief of Staff to an FCC Commissioner — meaning the very official previously overseeing telecommunications regulation now works to shape it from the other side of the table.
On top of the lobbying outlays, the Verizon PAC distributed $2,031,000 to candidates over the tracking period, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. The split ran 48.4% to Democratic candidates ($615,500) and 51.6% to Republican candidates ($656,000) — a calculated choice to maintain access on both sides of the aisle, with a modest tilt toward the party currently shaping the legislative agenda. Verizon executives added a further $64,833 in personal donations across the tracking period.
Verizon's PAC gave $615,500 to Democrats and $656,000 to Republicans — a 48.4% / 51.6% split that buys access to whichever party wins.
48.4%
51.6%
Democrats · $615,500
Republicans · $656,000
ACCESS-BUYER PENALTY APPLIED
Two of Verizon’s three outside lobbying firms — AVOQ, LLC and BGR Government Affairs — simultaneously work for other major corporate clients including Amazon.com and Kontoor Brands, creating shared intelligence networks where the same firm advising Verizon on regulatory strategy is plugged into the priorities of other industries.
Shared Lobbying Exposure
Verizon
client
AVOQ, LLC
lobbying firm
Amazon.com Inc
also a client
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
also a client
eBay Inc
also a client
BGR GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS also lobbies for Kontoor Brands Inc
Why it matters: the same firm argues Verizon’s case and its rivals’ — one hire buys a web of shared access that can’t be seen from outside. This network worsens Verizon’s political-access score (see methodology for the exact factor).
248 Paychecks Into One
The CEO Pay Gap
Verizon’s CEO pay ratio is 248:1, according to the company’s SEC DEF 14A proxy filing. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $38.3 million. The median Verizon employee — the worker exactly in the middle of the company’s entire pay distribution — earned $154,605.
To put that in language a frontline technician or retail associate can understand: the gap between what the person at the top of Verizon took home and what the person in the middle earned is so wide that a median worker would have to clock in for 248 straight years to match a single year of the chief executive’s package. Another way to frame it: that total compensation adds up to a full median employee salary earned every 36 hours.
Buybacks and Dividends
No stock buyback activity was recorded for the most recent fiscal year, and no dividend amounts appear in the available data for the tracking period. That means the calculation of what buyback spending could have delivered as a per-worker raise cannot be performed here — that transfer mechanism was not visibly operating during this period in the ways that most commonly dominate corporate wealth-extraction stories.
Tax Architecture
Verizon paid an effective tax rate of 22.3% — 1.3 percentage points above the 21% federal statutory rate that Congress set. On the headline rate alone, Verizon is paying modestly more than the statutory baseline, meaning it is not extracting a dramatic discount from the rate Congress set.
Verizon’s 10-K discloses that state and local income taxes added 3.3 percentage points to its effective rate — with California, Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia cited as the majority contributors — while a broad “Other adjustments” category trimmed 1.1 percentage points without detailed line-item explanation. Foreign tax effects cut an additional 0.6 percentage points, with Ireland explicitly identified as the jurisdiction where Verizon operates foreign subsidiary operations. The filing also discloses that undistributed earnings of certain foreign subsidiaries are indefinitely reinvested outside the U.S., with no U.S. deferred taxes provided on those earnings.
Because Verizon paid 1.3 percentage points more than the statutory rate, the headline figure does not shift real burden off the company’s balance sheet the way a deeply discounted effective rate does. What demands scrutiny is what sits below that rate. Verizon holds Unrecognized Tax Benefits equal to 10.0% of its pre-tax income — contested deductions it has claimed on its taxes that the IRS has not yet agreed are valid. That is not an accounting rounding error — it is a structural position that keeps a significant slice of potential tax liability unresolved and uncollected. The IRS is currently examining Verizon’s U.S. income tax returns for tax years 2017 through 2019, meaning that $2.647 billion in unrecognized tax benefits remains in open dispute.
12 Violations, $35 Million in Fines, and a Public Grant
The Pattern
Over the two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, regulators and courts found Verizon in violation of the law 12 times, resulting in $35,405,050 in penalties. These are not 12 instances of the same mistake. They span privacy breaches, consumer protection failures, hazardous waste disposal, employment discrimination, workplace safety infractions, underground storage tank violations, utility safety failures, and an oil spill. This is a compliance record that looks less like a series of accidents and more like a company operating at a scale where corners get cut across multiple business lines simultaneously. The two-year window is a fraction of Verizon’s full enforcement docket on the source site.
The single largest category by dollar — privacy violations, totaling $16 million — reflects something more serious than a billing dispute or a missed safety inspection. This is a case where the government determined that a Verizon subsidiary mishandled the personal data of customers who had no real alternative but to hand it over simply to use their phone or internet connection.
This is the median American household.
Two earners, a kid, a dog, $80,610 a year — the exact middle of the country (U.S. Census).
NOTICE OF PENALTY — HOUSEHOLD SCALE
ISSUED TO
the median U.S. household
BASIS
0.03% of annual income
$20.65
the same share of income that $35.4 million in penalties takes of the company’s revenue
Verizon's $35.4 million in regulatory penalties is 0.03% of its revenue — for a median household, the same bite as a $20.65 ticket.
The Big Cases
The largest single penalty in the tracking period landed in 2024: a $16 million FCC fine for a privacy violation against TracFone Wireless, a Verizon subsidiary. That case alone accounts for nearly half the company’s entire fine total for the two-year period — and it involves the same core failure repeated across Verizon’s broader fine record: protecting the data of people who trusted the company with it.
Beyond privacy, regulators kept finding problems. In 2025, the Arizona Attorney General assessed an $8 million consumer protection penalty. A California multi-agency enforcement action assessed $7.7 million for hazardous waste violations in 2026, with a separate California action collecting $3.5 million for hazardous waste violations in 2024. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission fined a Verizon entity $115,000 for employment discrimination in 2024. Workplace safety regulators at OSHA issued a $34,050 citation in 2025. Environmental regulators in Maine assessed a $20,000 penalty for an oil spill in 2025. The range of offenses — from data privacy to chemical waste to oil spills to job site safety — signals a compliance culture that falls short across departments, not just in one corner of the business.
The Subsidy Flip
While those enforcement actions were accumulating, Verizon simultaneously collected public money. In 2024, a government entity handed Verizon a $24,313 grant in Nebraska. The amount is trivially small against a $35.4 million fine tab, but the principle holds in every such case: a company with $138 billion in annual revenue received taxpayer-funded assistance in the same period it paid out tens of millions to settle legal violations.