http://www.gereports.com/setting-the-record-straight-ge-and-taxes
GE claims they paid $2.7 billion in taxes in ‘10 and paid $23 billion in the last 10 years.
The issue seems to be the difference between the check they actually wrote to the feds and the elegance of accrual accounting required by FASB’s. I doubt few could read the cash flow statement, and it would not have helped the Times anyway to acquire that skill.
“The ‘tax benefit’ reported in our financial statements was the “U.S. current tax provision on continuing operations” which is a book accounting concept and is not the same as our cash tax liability or cash tax payments. There was a benefit in our current tax provision because we didn't’t end up owing taxes we had accrued in prior years. This tax benefit resulted from reversing the taxes we had accrued in prior years, but much of this benefit was offset by increases in our tax liability for future years.