GE: $14B USD Profits, Pays No Taxes, Gets $3.2B Tax Benefit

[Gawd]

Ahhhh! Feels Good to be White.........and Green

GE: $14B USD Profits, Pays No Taxes For Last Year, Gets $3.2B Tax Benefit

GE Chief Executive is on Obama's innovation board, his company is on top of U.S. Gov't's "friends list"

Citizens and businesses can only hope to one day be as savvy tax-wise as General Electric Comp. The tech giant earned a sweet $14.2B USD in profit in 2010. And now the U.S. government has given it a hefty gift -- a year completely free of taxes and a $3.2B USD tax benefit.

The U.S. tax rate for corporations is supposedly 35 percent. But over the years crafty politicians have collaborated with business allies to work more holes into the tax code than a block of Swiss cheese. But even in today's era of free flowing corporate tax loopholes few companies have perfected the art to the degree GE has -- making massive profits, paying no taxes, and getting a tax benefit.

Part of how it snuck its way into such a sweetheart deal is the company it keeps. President Barack Obama anointed GE's chief executive as the head of his new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Among the council's key roles? Discussing corporate taxes.

......

To add a few more specifics on the origins of these tax breaks, GE is largely able to get them via a clever game of disguising profits in lucrative untaxed offshore holdings.

President Ronald Reagan in the eighties tried to eliminate this kind of behavior with the 1986 Tax Reform Act. Describes Robert S. McIntyre, director of the liberal group Citizens for Tax Justice, "Cracking down on offshore profit-shifting by financial companies like G.E. was one of the important achievements of President Reagan’s 1986 Tax Reform Act. The fact that Congress was snookered into undermining that reform at the behest of companies like G.E. is an insult not just to Reagan, but to all the ordinary American taxpayers who have to foot the bill for G.E.’s rampant tax sheltering."

In the wake of the Reagan era, the loopholes to the bill's strict provisions were added during the George Bush and Bill Clinton eras. Then in 2004 President George W. Bush cooked up the American Jobs Creation Act, perhaps the biggest blow to President Reagan's policy yet. The AJCA handed GE what would amount to $1B USD in tax savings a year. Many of its provisions were reportedly custom-tailored to GE.

.......

Obama is not any different from George Bush. Not that I don't think American deserved to be screwed.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=21230

[egbert]

Well after all, if they taxed GE, they'd really be taxing those dividends that are all that stands between those poor widows and orphans and starvation.
Now let's get back to those greedy Unions....

[.Morticia.]

those profit stats are after they pay dividends

[drl2]

GE Chief Executive is on Obama's innovation board, his company is on top of U.S. Gov't's "friends list"

More like "friends with benefits" list....

[Warren Dew]

Obama is not any different from George Bush.

I don't remember any "council on helping huge businesses" - er, "jobs and competitiveness" - under Bush.

[.Morticia.]

Obama is not any different from George Bush.

I don't remember any "council on helping huge businesses" - er, "jobs and competitiveness" - under Bush.

of course not

he and his admin were the businessmen that were profiteering from war

[egbert]

Jon Stewart: GE pays no taxes, fires workers, offers their jobs over seas, and Obama appoints CEO to chair the counsel on Jobs and Competitiveness. WHAT THE FUCK.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-m ... nything---

[Warren Dew]

Jon Stewart: GE pays no taxes, fires workers, offers their jobs over seas, and Obama appoints CEO to chair the counsel on Jobs and Competitiveness. WHAT THE FUCK.

Why are you surprised? Obama's 2008 campaign was run on fatcat contributions from big bankers and such. Now he's lining up the contributors for 2012.