Fiscal Cliff: In Your Face, page 5

I can't help but think people really miss the point here and it's a deliberate miss others spend billions and work endlessly to INSURE remains a miss. Why are people pissed at the companies and corporations??? They didn't write the tax code. They didn't create the loopholes that lets a multi-billion dollar international presence pay little in taxes. The corps and companies simply make USE of what our glorious politicians have spent decades building. There are breaks and gifts in there for everyone, everywhere...except normal people of course. We're hosed, as always.

If we're going to play 'Blame the Corp' though, lets at least be honest and consistent. General Electric is a sweetheart of both the past Bush and current Obama administrations. They are similar to Goldman Sachs for overlap between Uncle Sammy's brain dead bureaucratic and those serving high dollar positions at G.E. Lets have a look at this? It's telling how the class war we're being PUSHED to engage in is smoke and mirrors to protect the POLITICIANS who are playing everyone like puppets to their own benefit.

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren evoked corporate tax punching bag General Electric Co. in a recent ad, claiming the corporate giant pays “nothing – zero – in taxes” to make a point about misplaced values. But that’s not accurate.

We should preface this by saying that we are wading into a heated media debate about the amount of taxes paid by GE, and the most crucial number — the amount paid in corporate income tax — is unknown.

It's important to note, the article goes n to explain how she was flat wrong and misinformed, to be kind. However, she wasn't SO far off as not to see a HUGE problem here.

According to the New York Times story, GE reported U.S. profits of $5.1 billion in 2010 (and $14.2 billion worldwide). “Its American tax bill?” asked the Times. “None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.” The company accomplished this, the story said, due to “an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore.”

14 Billion in profit? The NYT editors may have troubles distinguishing 10Q filings and summary reports from tax returns on those details, but the profit line statements for a Corp are not so easily mistaken. They really highlight that stuff for the shareholders, after all. So that's a tidy sum in PROFIT. How much, if not 0, DID they pay on that largess?

Williams also pointed to a company press release, from April 17, on taxes paid by GE. According to that release, GE paid an effective global tax rate of 7 percent in 2010, counting money paid “to the IRS and foreign counterparts” in other nations. That rate was particularly low, Williams said, because the company lost $32 billion in its financial business during the global financial crisis.

Source

As this states in may places, General Electric employs aggressive but perfectly legal strategies to minimize it's tax liability and use the international nature of their enterprise to their best tax advantage.

When we look at the varied and politically broad selection of companies like G.E. or the Oil Companies to represent a cross section, it comes back to the same thing. This:

The only ones who benefit from the tax code are the ones writing the thing. If we can believe them to listen to Timothy Geithner and Rep. Charles Rangel (who helped write some of those thousands of pages or enforced them) it's too complex for even THEM to be expected to follow and not violate law with.

Yet....the poor blame the rich and the rich literally blame the poor. The only ones missed in the anger are the ones who really, literally, thought up and MADE this mess and they work in Washington....not New York. They come in Red and Blue, too.

edit on 29-11-2012 by Wrabbit2000 because: typo