Two-thirds of all active U.S. corporations did not have to pay federal income tax during the years 2006 to 2012, according to a new study published by the Government Accountability Office, which Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont requested to examine corporate tax loopholes.

Larger corporations with assets of at least $10 million were more likely to owe federal incomes taxes, but 42 percent of such companies still did not pay federal income tax in 2012, according to the government study published Wednesday that cites the most recent data available. Corporations that did have a federal income tax liability for 2012 owed $267.5 billion.

The federal watchdog noted that this data was collected during the recession and economic recovery, but reported that 19 percent of corporations with assets of at least $10 million that also reported a profit in 2012 still paid no federal income tax that year.

Sanders said in a press release that "there is something profoundly wrong in America when one out of five profitable corporations pay nothing in federal income taxes." The Democratic presidential candidate echoed his call to increase revenue for the federal government by "closing corporate tax loopholes."

"At a time when Republicans tell us that we don't have enough money to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure or provide universal childcare, maybe, just maybe we should stop allowing huge corporations to pay nothing in federal income taxes," said Sanders, who is also the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee. "Corporate greed is destroying the fabric of America. It must come to an end."

Profitable large U.S. corporations paid federal income taxes between 2008 and 2012 that, on average, amounted to 14 percent of their pre-tax income. The average corporate effective tax rate, which are taxes paid as a proportion of income, for large, profitable corporations was 22 percent between 2008 and 2012 when factoring together federal income taxes with foreign, state and local income taxes.

"Reasons why even profitable corporations may have paid no federal tax in a given year include the use of tax deductions for losses carried forward from prior years and tax incentives, such as depreciation allowances that are more generous in the federal tax code than those allowed for financial accounting purposes," the GAO study reports.