Posted on 03/25/2011 9:53:36 AM PDT by xtinct
General Electric paid no American taxes in 2010, the New York Times reports:
The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.
Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.
That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Do you own your own business? If you did, you would know that taxes are a cost of doing business. Costs are passed on in the form of higher prices. If the market cannot support the higher prices you go out of business or move overseas where the taxes or other costs of business (such as labor) are lower. Now that Japan is dropping its corporate tax rates the U.S. leads the world in tax rates. Between that and the thug unions is there any wonder why our industries have left the country?
“Why should large corporations fork over billions of dollars to endorse Socialism in Washington DC?”
Well, they reap the rewards of military protection, infrastructure, etc, just like the rest of us, so they should be paying something.
But critics say the use of so many shelters amounts to corporate welfare, allowing G.E. not just to avoid taxes on profitable overseas lending but also to amass tax credits and write-offs that can be used to reduce taxes on billions of dollars of profit from domestic manufacturing. They say that the assertive tax avoidance of multinationals like G.E. not only shortchanges the Treasury, but also harms the economy by discouraging investment and hiring in the United States.
Instead of asking the government to raise taxes on corporations, you should just ask them to raise your taxes directly and cut out the middleman.
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I’ve read that corporate taxes - which as you know are passed on to individuals - indirectly add over $3,000 per year per individual in higher taxes.
So when you look at local, state, property, federal taxes you pay - don’t forget to factor in your share of corporate taxes.
Folks need to think before they post. Do you really think that GE is evading the law? GE, like any good business or accountant conforms to the letter of the law in order to pay the minimum taxes possible. Every one of you do the same. If you are angry that GE owed no taxes in the US this year, blame Congress for writing the law, not GE for obeying the law. To do otherwise is to fall for the dems attempt to instigate class warfare.
GE CEO: “We are all Democrats Now”
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2009/11/ge-ceo-we-are-all-democrats-now.html
now I get what he meant! Charlie Rangel, Tim Geithner,
Tom Daschle...
No business should ever pay taxes!
In return, obama gets nothing but positive press from NBC, MSNBC and CNBC.
The list, ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
“Fair Tax, anyone?”
Stuf it up yor backside!
I believe it.
I do agree with those who have a problem with GE buying these tax breaks. It feeds into the overall corrupt socialist atmosphere in this country. The solution, as you know, is not to demand higher corporate taxes anymore than it is to demand higher individual taxes. The government needs to be shrunk, not expanded.
Corporate taxes are very complex. I think that GE’s US federal income tax return is at least 10,000 pages. They incur large costs to minimize corporate taxes. I do not support crony capitalism in which corporations lobby for competititve advantage over their competitors. I am not sure how GE’s lobbying has obtained special tax breaks not available to other competitors. I am not condemming GE without a careful analysis of their tax return.
“No business should ever pay taxes!”
The same problem would exist with excluding them as with anyone. The tax system is too manipulative where everyone would praise no taxes but go nuts at the loss of credits and such. Too much wealth is concentrated in corporate bank accounts to be ignored by the fed anyway.
“All corporate costs get passed on to the consumer.”
Not really. They’re constrained by what their competition chooses to try to pass along. They try to pass along what they can, but they can’t pass it all off. If they could, why would they care about taxes or try to carve out exceptions in the tax code? After all, they would just pass it on to the consumer.
Win[ning] The Future!
I do agree with those who have a problem with GE buying these tax breaks. It feeds into the overall corrupt socialist atmosphere in this country. The solution, as you know, is not to demand higher corporate taxes anymore than it is to demand higher individual taxes. The government needs to be shrunk, not expanded.
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Absolutely. That’s what I was saying upthread. Post 29.
In order to be profitable then revenue has to be higher than the combined total of ALL costs, which means that any profitable company is passing ALL costs to the consumer. They care about taxes just like with any other cost, there’s no guarantee the consumer will buy at higher costs, which I said later in the post which you apparently didn’t bother to read far enough to see. Of course what happens when the market won’t bare the increases necessary in the price for the corporation to pass on all costs is the corporation loses money, then they eventually go out of business.
And you're falling for the typical DemonRAT class envy trap.
First, “GE” is not a person, it is a corporation owned by shareholders. Shareholders risk their capital investing in the company with the hope of earning dividends on their investments. Those dividends are paid to the shareholders from the profits of the companies operations.
Profits are not “income”, so “income tax” isn't even the correct term.
Companies don't exist to provide jobs, or even provide goods and services, they exist to make money for the owners, who in turn pay “income taxes”.
Corporate taxes are very complex. I think that GE’s US federal income tax return is at least 10,000 pages.
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Try 24,000 pages.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Tax/ge-exxon-paid-us-income-taxes-09/story?id=10300167
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