GE pays no taxes, how about you?

Why is it that millions of small businesses and self employed are paying a huge tax burden to the point where they can't compete when this company can reap in billions with zero tax liability?

www.nytimes.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow"> www.nytimes.com...

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

Yep GE, the same guys who built the failed Japanese reactors, the same company that builds CT machines that irradiated hospital patients, the same company that proclaims itself as "all-American" but ships jobs to China.....

While General Electric is one of the most skilled at reducing its tax burden, many other companies have become better at this as well. Although the top corporate tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, one of the highest in the world, companies have been increasingly using a maze of shelters, tax credits and subsidies to pay far less. In a regulatory filing just a week before the Japanese disaster put a spotlight on the company’s nuclear reactor business, G.E. reported that its tax burden was 7.4 percent of its American profits, about a third of the average reported by other American multinationals. Even those figures are overstated, because they include taxes that will be paid only if the company brings its overseas profits back to the United States. With those profits still offshore, G.E. is effectively getting money back.

Well gee, I guess taxes and laws are really only for us little people. I, just like many self employed, pay a huge chunk of my earning in taxes. It almost seems like huge multi-national companies like high taxes because they could get away from paying them but they also know that smaller upstarts and future potential competition will drown in taxes before getting started. And I thought America was built on capitalism....

But the best thing is ...

Yet many companies say the current level is so high it hobbles them in competing with foreign rivals. Even as the government faces a mounting budget deficit, the talk in Washington is about lower rates. President Obama has said he is considering an overhaul of the corporate tax system, with an eye to lowering the top rate, ending some tax subsidies and loopholes and generating the same amount of revenue. He has designated G.E.’s chief executive, Jeffrey R. Immelt, as his liaison to the business community and as the chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, and it is expected to discuss corporate taxes.

Its sure is great that Obama wants to overhaul corporate taxes. Look, he even got a former GE exec to to help, I am sure that there is no conflict of interest there.

So when we see small business languish in a bad economy and still get taxed like crazy, or better yet when us citizens file our taxes to help keep the government running, think of GE making billions while only giving back in the way of airborne radioactive isotopes and mercury filled light bulbs.

Corporations don't pay taxes at the end of the year. They turn in there tax forms showing the money made and the share holders who received the profits K1 frorm. The K1 form is then given to the IRS and the share holders. The shareholders are responsible for paying the taxes listed on the K1 form.

search.irs.gov...

reply to post by JBA2848


C Corporation here, I am double taxed and not as blessed as GE(totally different internal structuring of classification). My old man retired from them after 40 years with a nice pension, benefits, options, ect... so I would say that their employees are very well taken care of, that must be where the extra money goes....Bravo GE....BRAVO!

reply to post by Vikus


For those who do not want to register for the New York Times site, here's another link with a similar story:

alternet.org

Yes, in case nobody has noticed, everything that serves the middle and working classes -- including salaries, benefits, education, police departments, fire departments, unemployment benefits and etc. -- is being slashed in state and federal budgets while more and more tax cuts are being paid to major corporations. Thereby NOT reducing the state or federal deficits, which are increased by the tax cuts.

It's a class warfare thing. Those who defend the mega-corporations will defend it and those who see the coming demise of the middle class will be angry. Interestingly, it seems that many, if not most, .ATS'ers are in the top 2% of income gatherers, or rather imagine that they will be one day soon.

reply to post by Vikus


I was involved with a fab expansion for their #1 rival in that industry, and I kept hearing from the grapevine that their CT systems had issues.

GE's tax status gets recognition because it is after all an American iconic corporate manufacturing behemoth that is grounded by its founder The Great Thomas Edison. GE should have a nice place in America's heart when it comes to taxation, after all it is GE!

*All American corporations should be taxed at a lower bracket.

Why should a corporation pay any taxes at all? It's all incorporated into the price of a product. People pay ALL taxes, no matter where the government confiscates the money. Shareholders pay taxes on dividends. Employees pay taxes on wages. Corporrate taxes are just better hidden because the price of your widgets includes the price of corporate taxes. You guys who are shocked and outrages that corporation which do not pay taxes ought to be shocked and outraged that they do at all. WE are the ones getting ripped off here. A corporation isn't alive.

reply to post by schuyler


A corporation is recognized as a "entity" with its own definition set by the IRS for tax classifications. I hate politics, because it intrudes on business so destructively. The poles switch from dem to rep and back and forth. Over all taxes have their places, but not heavily within your own infrastructure. It has always been a touchy subject, and always will. I grew up with an advanced understanding about the U.S. economic system and its dynamic flux, so I see it as it is. Taxation without representation, it cost to be the boss type scenario.

America is still the best place on earth, it's just not the best place on earth to do Business and get taxed. I see a lot of people taking their business else where cash and all before the dollar collapses.