General Electric: Billions in Profits. Almost ZERO in Federal Tax. Spends 82 Million on lobbyists. [View all]

[Triana]

General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt takes a similar position in a recent op-ed. Immelt defends the company’s tax record simply by noting that the company “pay[s] billion in taxes.” This is true, but also meaningless for a company with earnings as gigantic as GE’s. In fact, over the past 10 years, GE paid an effective federal income tax rate of -1.6 percent on $58 billion in profits. Over 15 years, the company’s federal income tax rate was just 5.2 percent.

The company’s tax-avoiding ways extend to the state level, too. Over the past five years, the company paid an effective state income tax rate of just 1.6 percent. Immelt likely focuses on the dollar amount and not the company’s tax rate because there is simply no way of fudging the numbers to make the company appear to be paying income taxes at anything but a ridiculously low rate.

LINKS:

http://www.taxjusticeblog.org/archive/2016/04/just_plain_wrong_ge_and_verizo.php#.V3aYBZMrJGx - GE Taxes paid

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000125 - GE spending on lobbying in 2016 (59% of lobbyists employed by GE are "revolvers" ie: revolving door hires from within government or hires from private industry into gov't)

It's clear to me that GE and most likely all other corporations:

1. Pay far too little in taxes using tax shelters and tax avoidance schemes that need to be removed from US tax laws
2. Pay for too much for revolving-door lobbyists to twist arms in Washington to get "our" representatives to write and pass those tax laws and keep them in place and to enact other corporate welfare policies exclusively for the benefit of GE and other corps like them.
3. Wield FAR TOO MUCH influence in the federal and state governments while paying little to no taxes to contribute to their functions to serve the public good. GE evidently believes the function of federal and state governments is solely to kiss GE's ass (and other corporate entities' asses) at the expense of the rest of us - the public. Those losses in corporate tax revenues means US workers have to pay more or suffer cuts in public services such as upkeep of infrastructure, public transportation, regulation and mantenance of clean energy and water systems, providing the FDA with the tools and personnel needed to regulate and ensure safe food and other products, building and maintaining public schools that ALL kids can attend regardless their parents income, maintaining and expanding social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid,and Social Security, public television and radio, etc.

Corporations like GE want to USE our public infrastructure for their businesses and their employees -- but they don't want to have to PAY for them.

Bullshit.

BULL. SHIT.