Nov 18th 2011, 20:57:23
Businesses get good tax incentives, as long as they play the game right. I own two businesses right now, and I employ an accounting firm that I meet with once every 3 months for tax planning. They take a look at my companies income (keep in mind, my companies are private, not public like GE), assets on hand, among other things and tell me best how to spend my companies money to beat the tax monster at the end of the year. While I've never had a year where I've payed NOTHING, they do some phenomenal work to get it pretty close to zero, or at least where what I pay in taxes is minimal compared to what the companies pulled in. In GEs case, I'm sure they employ no less than 2500 people just to do their finances, including lawyers, accountants, and probably their own helpers from the IRS. When you have the kind of money they do, you can afford to spend a small fortune just to keep your money out of governments hands (which, in my experience, is for the best).
Side-note: All the money I spend (and GE as well) on accounting services is a tax write off. Cheers.
Schilling