Ninety-one Fortune 500 companies paid zero or less federal income taxes for their income in the U.S., according to a new report. 

Big corporations including Amazon, IBM and Chevron are on the list.

Their average effective tax rate was negative 5.9 percent, which means some of the corporations received refunds from the IRS. The tax break was mainly enjoyed by a few very large and quite profitable corporations.

The effective zero federal income tax enjoyed by the company was induced by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which lowered the statutory federal income tax rate to 21 percent from the previous 35 percent, according to a study conducted by American think tank Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The law was signed by U.S. President Donald Trump at the end of 2017, and implemented in 2018.

TCJA did a comprehensive overview of the 379 profitable corporations among the Fortune 500, who thus needed to pay income taxes. On average, the corporations paid 11.3 percent of the federal income tax, barely more than half of the required 21 percent statutory tax rate.

The think tank argued that instead of eliminating the then existing special breaks and loopholes in the corporate tax system, the new law brought in many new breaks and loopholes for big American corporations to take advantage of.

Companies including Bank of America, JP Morgan, Apple, Amazon and UPS enjoyed biggest tax breaks in 2018.