Washington - Eleven corporations including General Electric, Boeing and Wells Fargo together reported $62 billion in domestic profits in 2010 while paying a negative 3.6 percent federal tax rate, according to data released Wednesday by Citizens for Tax Justice.

The Washington-based interest group, which is backed by labor unions, hopes the data will help persuade President Barack Obama to abandon his efforts to rewrite the corporate tax code without collecting additional revenue. The organization said the figures make the case for using a corporate tax overhaul to generate more revenue.

"Our elected officials have a duty to the American public to make reducing or eliminating the vast array of corporate tax subsidies the centerpiece of any deficit-reduction strategy," Bob McIntyre, the director of Citizens for Tax Justice, said in a press release accompanying the report.

Included in the report is General Electric, whose chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, serves on Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Citizens for Tax Justice said the Fairfield, Conn.-based company's effective tax rate during 2010 was a negative 64 percent on $5.1 billion in U.S. profits.

"GE is fully compliant with all tax laws," company spokesman Andrew Williams said in an emailed statement. "There are no exceptions."

GE plans to file its 2010 federal tax return by September and anticipates that it will have a "small" tax liability, Williams said in the statement.

Many factors can contribute to high domestic profits and low federal tax rates for U.S. companies, such as the results of audits of previous years' returns. Also, companies can take deductions for domestic expenses related to income they earn overseas. The United States doesn't tax overseas profits until they are brought home.

Besides GE, Boeing and Wells Fargo, Citizens for Tax Justice included in the data Exxon Mobil, American Electric Power, du Pont, Verizon Communications, FedEx, Honeywell International, IBM, Yahoo and United Technologies Corp. Information from FedEx was for 2008 and 2009 only; the company's 2010 fiscal year ended yesterday and was not included in the study's 2010 calculation.

Together, the 12 companies earned $171 billion in U.S. income between 2008 and 2010 while paying an effective tax rate of a negative 1.5 percent in that period.

Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass. and senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said the current tax code is responsible for the low tax rates paid by the corporations.

The companies "hired good tax attorneys and accountants," he said in a brief interview. "It's the code. It's not them."

Similar data released by Citizens for Tax Justice more than 20 years ago helped spur the 1986 tax overhaul, the last major rewrite of the U.S. tax code.

The current top tax rate for U.S. corporations is 35 percent. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., has proposed lowering that rate to 25 percent without providing details. The committee plans to hold a hearing tomorrow exploring the macroeconomic effects of a tax overhaul on companies.

Citizens for Tax Justice said the data it released Wednesday is a "preview" of a broader study of the tax rates paid by Fortune 500 companies.

The interest group said it based its findings on company filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that specify the companies' tax expense. That number can be different from what companies pay in taxes to the Internal Revenue Service, which is kept private.