General Electric, one of the largest corporations in America, filed a whopping 57,000-page federal tax return earlier this year but didn't pay taxes on $14 billion in profits. The return, which was filed electronically, would have been 19 feet high if printed out and stacked....

http://www.weeklystandard.com/...llion-profits_609137.html

http://www.opensecrets.org/....php?type=P&year=2010

why are you suprised. Most of the US federal elected officials owns shares in GE.
:)

Out of 535 elected representatives to the US House and the US Senate, 94 people owning GE stock does not make most. It makes it about 18%

My GE stock has taken a ridiculous dive from it's value when I got it. Real dog. They can use all the help they can get.

@sigma: stop fisking me! :P

just noticed this now?

Brink has GE stock so forget the other 350 million people in the US taking responsibility over the increased deficit caused by not collecting taxes from GE. Totally United Statesian.

How dare they employ 287,000 people and pay $2.5 billion worth of dividends to their investors this year.

fluff that. I care about them paying their taxes rather than big dividends. I do my part and they can do theirs.

Furthermore, GE was one of the pioneers of outsourcing. They were one of the first people to start shipping American jobs overseas en masse.

In this case I believe they paid a large lump sum to cover taxes for several years.

that $2.5 billion worth of dividends to their investors mostly ends up in the hands of the exec and a wealthy few since that's who owns the bulk of the shares (like 90% of that). Recycling money is not economic growth.

As for how many people they employ, how many of those are in the united states?

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

even if the company doesnt pay taxes, the individual who receive, the dividends still do it would obviously be better if the gov got to tax them twice, but its not like no taxes are coming from those profits. Its also very likely that those recieving the dividends are in the higher tax bracket anyway (a higher tax rate than the corp tax rate too)

@Schilling,

I also pay my accountant too much to prove I am indigent.

***snore***

ancient news

I know exactly what you mean! Although when I go over some the savings they've given me I find they're totally worth it.

@archaic: Agreed.

So your saying that in the US, all accounting service fees are deductable from your net surplus ?

w00t corporate corruption 4 the win

Rarely can you deduct 100% of anything. Usually it's a percentage of a percentage. I'd really have to ask the accountants to be sure what the actual figures are. I know in terms of my fuel cost for my vehicles I can write off 35% of half of what I spend. So, say I spent $100 on fuel, I can write off 35% of $50 dollars ($17.50). As far as the accounting costs, I'm not quite sure how much, but I'm sure the figure is similar.

Schilling

Your accountant finds that better than taking the milage? You must put tremendious wear and tear on your vehicles for itemization to be the better play.

In my opinion everyone owes taxes. For GE to get out of paying taxes is not fair. If I pay taxes, they should too. Just because they are big doesn't mean they don't have to pay taxes.

GE does employ a lot of people in the US, however they employ way more outside the US. GE is only a pseudo american company anymore. Right now they are exploding in south america.

Make no mistake our tax code is the worst in the world when it comes to developed countries.

So GE is charged payroll taxes, unemployment taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, GE employees pay the same taxes using GE generated dollars. They create jobs, help drive the economy.

GE is one of the top investors in Green Energy and Medical advancement.

To start working on making it fair, you will need to start doing all the things on this short and not complete list of things they do.

Not that I am a GE cheerleader, I wish the stock would go up so my dividends were greater. But it does bother me to come across people who seemingly don't understand what it means to risk your, your families, certainly your children's welfare to create and run a company.

Risk has greater reward. Otherwise everyone would do it.

I should let this thread go, it's only going to get under my skin......

Tax holidays for EVVVVERY BODDDY!!!!! YOU GET A TAX HOLIDAY!! YOU GET A TAX HOLIDAY!!!! EVERYONE GETS A TAX HOLIDAY.... except for you... your pour.

How is GE any different than any other company?

I pay income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes.... the list keeps going but they don't have to? Seems a bit out of wack aye?

Want GE to pay its fair share of taxes? Simplify the tax code (eliminate loopholes, have only 1 or 2 taxes), lower corporate tax rates, and do other tax reform that makes it cheaper and easier for corporations to simply pay their taxes.

Simplifying the tax code would be great but it also would need to be combined with a larger set of acceptable accounting rules in terms of what exactly constitutes profit meaning that it's not so easy to win here. It would be nice to say simply: K% of all profits gets taxed. But how does one calculate profits?
Of course it's easier to tax a % of sales, but that creates massive inequities in the tax code.

How do my investments in plant and equipment factor in to my profit calculation? How do re-adjustments to loss reserves work? How much am I allowed to manipulate via accounting rules to reduce how much taxes I pay?

Definately it's easy to simplify the formula for paying taxes once profit is calculated, but getting to that point is not easy and every industry is different. Hell, after 10 years we can't even agree on how to streamline accounting rules yet and will probably need another 5...

Why should profits be taxed? I pay taxes on all of my revenue. Clearly the corporate taxrate would have to be greatly reduced to operate that way but it sure would simplify things.

how much of the profit is going to be re-invested in R&D?

Mileage is taken into account as well. I was simply isolating the fuel cost as an example of what a "deduction" can look like.

No taxes?