GE Paid Less Taxes Than You Last Year, Says The New York Times

The tax code was written by politicians who were beholden to special interest groups...One hand wahses the other, and both hands pick the pockets of the average American !

STEAL 100 DOLLARS GO TO JAIL-----STEAL MILLIONS GO TO CONGRESS-----

congress should give up their health care and retirement benefits----

The taxes they pay are determined by the laws Congress passes. Blame Congress if you want to blame someone. We all pay as few taxes as we legally can, GE no exception. And don't try to blame a political party: the problem is endemic. Special interests, including unions as well as medical associations, agricultural interests, water interests, - on and on - pay for elections and re-elections to get the benefits they want. The only constituency that doesn't get to pay for the congressmen they want in office is the ordinary citizen, especially the poor. Democracy at work? No, greed and power at work.

We should lower the Corporate tax rate and close the loopholes.
Ours is currently the 2nd highest in the industrialized world.
A lower tax rate would create an incentive for smaller companies to stay here - the kind that can't afford an army of tax specialists. By closing the loopholes, we can make companies like GE pay their fair share.
The uneeded tax specialists are generally bright folks, they would find work that is more productive for our society. We would need fewer IRS agents - not many should be upset about that.

Here is an idea for reforming the tax code. SO we can get it out of the way up front this will be a progressive tax system. Set the four brackets and set the tax rate at each bracket. Say the lowest tax rate is 5% and the highest tax rate is 15%. (The exact mix would need to be determined so as to not significantly change the curent revenues for the US gov't) All income would then be viewed the same way, whether it was paid in salary or earned through capital investment etc. If you earned income you pay the rate for your tax bracket end of story. There would have to be changes in 401Ks and other retirement systems to recognise the change in the tax system. Effectively there would be no deductions for anything but the tax rates would all be alot lower so as to balance that in the equation. This also stops the @#$% of some people never paying any taxes because what ever you earn you pay at your tax bracket. This is an idea in progress and it would be nice to get feedback and ideas instead of vitriol and hate. Thanks.

GE paid every tax dollar that they owed, so who is to blame? Your corrupt POLITICIANS!, who freely negotiate with the mindset "you scratch my back and I will scratch yours". They only care for themselves, and they have no concept of controlling spend to income.

Whatever the result their "scratching" results in is what the corporations have to pay in taxes.

Simplify the tax code or this is what you get.
Shameful!
The problem is with Congress who writes the code.

Charlie Wrangel as head of the ways and means committewas very influential in writing our tax code. He is said to be a big tax evader. He finally foreced out of this position after his substantial ethics issues.

The champions of higher taxes are the best at avoiding taxes. For example, John Kerry's effective personal income tax was very small as a percent of his income. He keeps his yacht out of state to avoid taxes. Other notable tax evaders : Tom Daschle, Timothy Geitner, & Charlie Wrangel. These guys have been involved in making and enforcing tax law.

If they evade their own taxes, its not a big stretch to think that they could be on the take while writing the tax code. Many companies write big checks to these guys.

This story is getting a bit old. It appeared last week, and Henry won't give it a rest, nor is anyone interested in telling the full truth. And what is that, you ask?

First off, it is true that GE works the system to avoid taxes as much as possible. They do nothing illegal, but they do take advantage of a complicated and poorly designed system of taxation. I would expect GE to do like any other corporation or individual. We take whatever deductions we can, because we'd rather keep our money than sent it to the US Treasury.

The second thing that must be mentioned (and I think GE has responded in much the same way, but Yahoo elected to ignore their statement), is that 2010 was not a typical year in terms of taxes. Over time, GE has paid 20%+ in US income taxes. However, the financial crisis trashed GE Capital, and that created some fairly significant write-downs. As they say, a financial crisis is not really a tax avoidance strategy. If you look at the major banks, they also paid little to no tax in the past few years, because they took huge asset write downs. On the other hand, GE did pay huge amounts of property, local, and payroll taxes, so it's not as though they are living free. I think what is more fair is to look at their total contribution to government, which might be measured to their total tax outlay over a period of 10 years.

Finally, let's see if the pot is calling the kettle black. New York Times didn't pay taxes last year, either. Neither did Yahoo. I'm sure they have all sorts of very good reasons they would love to share with the public. Not. It is easier to find a brand name example and drag them through the mud. That's what sells papers. Give it a rest, Henry. Oh, and how much tax did YOU pay last year? Enquiring minds want to know.

By now, every fifth grader should know that the corporate elite run this country by controlling the little girls in Congress who make the loophole laws at their pleasure. They reward them by giving them lifetime tenure in Washington. The FED is their @#$% boy who sets the monetary policy that enriches them at the expense of the disinfranchised masses. Now, can you give us some real news today?

They could simplify the tax code, but all the banks and corps that provide the tax specialists would spend millions to lobby against it.

Until we get lobbying under control and the elected politicians being responsable to their voters and not to the corps, things are only going to get worse not better.

GE has been convicted multiple times for bribery overseas. Does anyone really doubt that they are not doing the same things in the USA?

Yes the government is to blame for creating this convoluted tax system. But corporations like GE pay billions of dollars to politicians, bureaucrats and staffers, through their armies of lobbyists, specifically to make the tax code more complex, more impenetrable, more corrupt. That is how they avoid taxes.

If GE paid zero in taxes. How much did they pay last year in lobbying?

Politicians won't overhaul the tax code like that. They need a complex tax code so they have tools to curry favor, reward allies, protect monopolies that are "crucial to national interests" from disruptive competition, and centrally plan the economy.

CONGRESS IS THE PROBLEM-----MADE IN THE USA NOW --MADE IN CHINA---

Everytime a law is made to make the taxes more fair, lobbyists swarm in and 100 exceptions are tagged onto the new law. Hence the complications.

How about killing two birds with one stone.
"And because our byzantine tax laws allow multi-national companies not to pay U.S. taxes on overseas profits,"
Make oversea profits a HIGHER tax. Then not only will you get tax revenue, it rewards companies to NOT ship jobs overseas.

But of course you'll get lobbyists pouring in and all the anti capitalist talk from the GOP.

GE is just playing by the rules put in place by the dummies in washington....

Four words: Tax Reform...Term Limits. Unless you're brain dead, everyone knows tax reform is needed regardless of income brackets. But it's going to take terms limits in Congress to allow innovation in the tax code, because NONE of them have the guts to make the needed changes.

OK, its complicated. But articles like this are helping people understand whats going on. I DO blame GE. They want America's market, infrastructure, talent, bailouts (GE Capital got TARP money), and tax subsidies. Then they hire an army of tax accountants and lobbyists to get out of paying any taxes? And those stupid commercials to make you think they making wonderful green energy products. Come on!

Between the dozens of different types of taxes, not to mention the complexity of the tax codes themselves, things have finally reached the point that our tax system is completely disfunctional. A simplification and/or elimination of taxes, even at the expense of it being regressive, is preferable over our current system of complex, disjointed, and antiquated tax laws.

We're still using a 19th century approach to taxation in the 21th century.