GE: 7,000 tax returns, $0 U.S. tax bill

[elifino]

http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/16/news/companies/ge_7000_tax_returns/index.htm


NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- General Electric filed more than 7,000 income tax returns in hundreds of global jurisdictions last year, but when push came to shove, the company owed the U.S. government a whopping bill of $0.

How'd it pull off that trick? By losing lots of money.

GE had plenty of earnings last year -- just not in the United States. For tax purposes, the company's U.S. operations lost $408 million, while its international businesses netted a $10.8 billion profit.

elifino

This is not acceptable!!!!!!!!!!!!

[napi21]

1. That tax loophole has been used by all the bog co's for a long time!

How do you think Exxon, Blackwater, etc. get away with paying $0 in US taxes?

[underpants]

2. Exxon $0 GE $0 but I paid

go figure

[elocs]

3. Here yesterday afternoon with 13 Recs:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8162617

[zbdent]

4. interesting ... maybe all of those 47% who don't pay any taxes

aren't who the "liberal media" spins them to be ...

in other words, I wonder how many of the 47%ers who don't pay taxes are millionaires, billionaires, and corporations?

[Synicus Maximus]

5. The question is not if they paid any tax or not, the question is

did they owe any tax or not. If they did not owe any tax why would they pay any tax? If they owed taxes and did not pay that is another question.

[provis99]

6. it is illegal, shady accounting, exactly the same thing that Enron did.

GE made tons of money in America this year, but through accounting, shifted the profits overseas, and their overseas losses were shifted to their American balance line. Thus, they paid no taxes. This is completely illegal, and the government knows they are doing it, but our government is owned by corporations and so Holder and the FEC won't hold GE and others like it accountable.

[Thothmes]

8. I bet, when push comes to shove

that their tax statements are strictly iaw with our current tax law. The folks that we should be upset with are the folks in the Congress of the United States that wrote the tax law to allow them to get away with this.

[Catshrink]

7. Neither did Exxon Mobil

Outrageous: Exxon Mobil Paid No Income Tax in 2009

"Last week, Forbes magazine published what the top U.S. corporations paid in taxes last year. “Most egregious,” Forbes notes, is General Electric, which “generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.” Big Oil giant Exxon Mobil, which last year reported a record $45.2 billion profit, paid the most taxes of any corporation, but none of it went to the IRS:

Exxon tries to limit the tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands that (legally) shelter the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. No wonder that of $15 billion in income taxes last year, Exxon paid none of it to Uncle Sam, and has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas.

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/04/06/outrageo...