G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether – NYTimes.com.
Jeffrey Immelt has a special position as Obama’s Liaison to the Business Community, and as Chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
Immelt’s Company, General Electric is numero uno among U.S. corporations in Tax Avoidance. Their net payout on (5 billion in profit) to the IRS is Zero.
The company has managed to balance it’s financial statements of profit from the U.S. and abroad so as to be paying zero U.S. taxes.
These kinds of strategies are out of reach for normal U.S. taxpayers, and of course we are not serving on Obama’s special committees. So we do not have most favored Tax Status. Ronald Reagan had noticed such outsized advantages for large corporations and eliminated many loopholes, while drastically lowering the tax rates for everyone. In succeeding decades the large entities regained much of their preferential tax advantages.
In the last 8 years, GE has reduced US employment by 20 percent and has increased overseas employment. Cumulative overseas profits have increased from $15 billion to $92 billion in that period. Declaring profits in countries with much lower taxes than the U.S. is highly beneficial to the bottom line
Wouldn’t you like to be multinational too?
