As it has done for the past 19 years, the Institute for Policy Studies on Thursday released its annual study of executive compensation. Once again the progressive think tank is singling out corporate executives who were paid more in 2011 than their companies shelled out in taxes.

According to “Executive Excess 2012: The CEO Hands in Uncle Sam's Pocket,” of the nation's 100 highest-paid chief executives, 26 of their companies fell into that category.

Those CEOs took in average compensation worth $20.4 million, up 23 percent over the previous year's 25 executives who fit the profile. Seven firms made the list both years: Boeing, Chesapeake Energy, Ford Motor, International Paper, Marsh & McLennan, Motorola Mobility Holdings, and Motorola Solutions.

Among the CEOs singled out were: Citigroup's Vikram Pandit (2011 compensation of $14.9 million compared to the company's tax refund of $144 million); Miles White, Abbott Laboratories ($19.0 million compensation, $586 million refund); Randall Stephenson, AT&T ($18.7 million compensation, $420 million refund); James McNerney, Boeing ($18.4 million compensation, $605 million refund); Robert Benmosche, American International Group ($13.9 million compensation, $208 million refund); and Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake Energy ($17.9 million compensation, $13 million payment).

Among the reasons for the disparity between compensation and total taxes, according to the group, are loopholes that get around a 1993 law that capped executive pay deductions at $1 million by adding performance-based rewards and stock options atop a smaller base salary. The report cites 2011 earnings by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison whose stock options and non-equity incentive pay provided “a total of $76 million in fully deductible performance-based pay.” A similar study of tax deductions for performance-based pay was released on Aug. 14 by the Economic Policy Institute.

Other findings in the IPS report:

Combined, the 26 firms it singles out have 537 subsidiaries in tax-haven countries such as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and Gibraltar.

The four most direct tax subsidies for excessive executive pay cost taxpayers an estimated $14.4 billion per year—$46 for every American man, woman, and child. That amount could also cover “the annual cost of hiring 211,732 elementary-school teachers or creating 241,593 clean-energy jobs.”

The tax code currently places no real limit on how much performance-based compensation corporations can deduct from their taxes. The top five 2011 beneficiaries of this loophole had a combined $232 million in deductible performance-based pay. Absent this loophole, the tax bills for these companies would have jumped $81 million, or an average of more than $16 million per CEO.

The tax code also allows corporations to defer unlimited sums of CEO compensation. The top five executive beneficiaries of this loophole in 2011 deferred $48 million in compensation. Without this loophole, their combined personal tax bills would have been $17 million higher.

Executive pay proposals failed to receive a majority of shareholder support at 53 U.S. companies in 2012, up from 40 last year. Three of these firms were on the list of 26 companies (Chesapeake Energy, Citigroup, and Cooper Industries). The non-binding shareholder "say on pay" vote is among the compensation-related rules included in the Dodd-Frank Act.