GE Rakes In Profits but Pays No Taxes

If you are a teacher, union member or public employee who’s been taking the heat for supposedly being responsible for all the fiscal stress heaved onto the states (and hence cities and counties) by a federal government with, uh … revenue problems, you should be outraged at GE.

Remember, however, it’s not just GE. It’s every large corporation in America. They are the ones who can afford the hundreds of tax attorneys and lobbyists to ensure that these corporate tax breaks stay in place, so they don’t have to ever pay their share.

As long as it’s only the ‘little people’ who are doing the heavy lifting, this country will continue it’s inexorable slide to third world status. And Wall Street and the Corporate America will continue the blame the victims. You and me.

Our parents and grandparents would be saddened by what we have allowed to happen.

You may say, ‘what’s this got to do with Nevada?’ The same thing is going on here - the mining interests walking away with billions and not paying a damn cent of the Constitutionally proscribed 5%. We need to take a stand and stop it here in Nevada, and at the federal levels too.

-maven

The Star-Ledger Editorial Board -

The wealthy real estate magnate Leona Helmsley once said, “Only the little people pay taxes.” She was dubbed “the Queen of Mean” and went to prison for tax evasion.

What a coincidence. Turns out General Electric, which had $14.2 billion in profits last year, pays no taxes, either, according to a news report. But no one is calling CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt names. And he won’t be doing time in a cell: President Obama made him a liaison to the business community and appointed him to lead the president’s council on jobs and competitiveness.

How’d that happen? As always, it’s who you know and what you know. And GE has excelled at drawing the best and brightest to protect its profits: A million-dollar lobbying team that includes former Treasury and IRS officials, and the savviest ex-Congressional staffers around.

The company now makes most of its money from lending abroad, not from appliances and light bulbs, all the better for its bottom line: As long as those profits stay off U.S. shores, the IRS has no claim. And the $5 billion in U.S. profits? Only a very dim bulb would pay anything on those gains. GE finessed a series of tax breaks and write-offs, and charmed powerful legislators with well-timed donations to their districts to keep gaping loopholes in place.

GE will likely crank up a million-dollar public relations campaign in the days ahead, trumpeting its philanthropy to counteract the nasty smell that now clings to its corporate image. That shouldn’t sway anybody.

The corporate giant gets to thumb its nose at the little people, at a time when the U.S. Treasury could use every last dime it can scrounge. Programs for children and families are being sacrificed on the altar of a trillion-dollar deficit, and the remnants of the union movement are vilified for trying to hang on to some semblance of a middle-class existence for their members.

For Obama to ally himself with corporate greed at a time like this makes no sense at all.