First of all I'm skeptical of anything the government does to wipe out tax credits and collect more taxes.
The bankruptcy did wipe out some of GM's debt, but not all of it. So you can say that some of those losses were wiped out by the bankruptcy. However, the whole purpose of bankruptcy is to help a company get back on sound footing, not to produce a windfall in new tax revenues for the government.
When you make money you have to pay taxes on earnings. When you lose money the government doesn't refund any of the taxes you have paid, they give you credits against future earnings. Those tax credits are kind of a liability for the government. I don't see why that liability should be wiped out as well.
However this seems to be a unique case. The stockholders got completely screwed. Their old stock became worthless. I can see the point where you could say that these tax credits belonged to them, and since they no longer have any interest in GM, those tax credits no longer belong to this new GM. But I don't see any efforts by the government to transfer those tax credits over to the stockholders they screwed over, and I see absolutely no reason the government should just make those tax credits disappear. It's just a multibillion dollar money grab by the government.
To me this falls under two wrongs not making a right.
Apparently GM was dissolved, as they are talking about an IPO.
That makes sense, because I don't see how they could so thoroughly screw over the stock holders and secured debt holders and still have it be the same company. I really don't understand how this was remotely legal anyway. They basically gave money that secured debt holders should have gotten to the unions, and handed over billions in taxpayer dollars, mainly to the unions. Then they bullied any investors that considered fighting it in court.
I think we're both mostly on the same page with this. Like you, I don't like to see the government get a windfall profit off the dissolution of the company. However, I think I don't want the union to profit from their immoral deal with the devil even more.
That makes sense, because I don't see how they could so thoroughly screw over the stock holders and secured debt holders and still have it be the same company. I really don't understand how this was remotely legal anyway.
It wasn't legal. The problem though, is that the government has guns and is willing to use them at the drop of a hat. (This is the main difference between us and them. We have guns, but aren't willing to kill indiscriminately.) Thos involved understand the level the game was being played at, and largely swallowed their losses because the understood the consequences of not doing so.