The terminology is as confusing as it is suspicious: off-balance-sheet partnerships, foreign tax havens, non-expense-item stock option deductions. But they all boil down to the same thing: the art of tax avoidance while appearing profitable. It was something at which the energy trading company Enron was a master.

Americans are already cynical about the tax system. Now, with the unfolding Enron scandal, how can anyone avoid the conclusion that only the little guy pays? While a typical family earning $50,000 per year may end up owing a quarter or more of its income in federal taxes, companies such as Enron have been paying nothing.

Enron shares this distinction with 24 other Fortune 500 companies that paid no income taxes in 1998, according to a study by Citizens for Tax Justice. By using ethically dubious accounting tricks and tax loopholes, large companies not only avoid corporate income taxes, they put themselves in a position to claim huge refunds. Enron paid no income taxes for four of the past five years and was entitled to a rebate of $382-million.

How is this possible? How can a company that reported pretax profits over the same five-year period of $1.785-billion -- a company whose top executives were some of the most lavishly compensated in the country -- also have its hand in the pockets of American families earning just enough to qualify for middle-class status?

Ask our political leaders. They are the ones who have allowed, and are still allowing, companies to get away with it.

The first disgrace was Congress' dismantling of the alternative minimum tax. Passed in 1986, the tax was intended to prevent highly profitable corporations from using loopholes to erase their tax liability. Due to changes in the law in 1993 and 1997, the alternative minimum tax is now -- in the words of Citizens for Tax Justice -- "a shell of its former self."

Enron wasn't satisfied, though. It used its hefty lobbying budget to try to shelve whatever remained of the tax. It succeeded in persuading President Bush to include a repeal of the law as part of his economic stimulus plan. The plan ultimately failed only because the Senate balked.

The tax code also allowed Enron to exploit loopholes for overseas partnerships. Under the code, there is a recognition that corporate profits earned by foreign subsidiaries should not be taxed twice, by the government where the profits were made and by the U.S. government. Enron went to absurd lengths to exploit this provision, forming nearly 900 partnerships in known tax havens, places such as the Cayman Islands and Mauritius, where there is no corporate income tax. Enron's profits were then funneled to its foreign partners, which took a fee and returned the money to Enron in non-taxable form.

During the Clinton administration, this practice was seriously attacked and investigated by the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department. Since Bush took office, the criticism has quieted.

Enron also used stock options to avoid tens of millions of dollars in tax liability. The company was able to deduct the huge profits its executives earned by exercising their stock options. Here, Enron had a double bonus: The deductions sharply reduced its tax bill, yet it didn't have to list those stock-option profits as an expense item on its financial statement, thereby appearing to bolster its earnings.

As the scandal continues to churn, we can expect many more revelations about the way Enron cheated American taxpayers, duped its stockholders and, perhaps most tragically, abandoned its rank-and-file employees, many of whom lost their retirement savings along with their careers.

There is something deeply wrong with a tax system that asks working men and women to pay their share, yet gives multibillion-dollar corporations a free ride. Had Enron not been able to use corporate tax loopholes, the company would have had a total tax bill for the past five years of $625-million. Think about how much middle-class taxpayer relief that could have bought.

If Congress and our president want the country to pull together during this time of crisis, they need to show that the government does not give special favors to corporate interests at the expense of the rest of us. Enron's example seems to prove otherwise.

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