You Pay More Tax Than General Electric

Anne from GE: It is incorrect and misleading to suggest GE has not paid tax since 2008.


--GE's 2009 U.S. tax expense reflects the fact that we had losses in our financial services business in 2009, which resulted in tax benefits. Because we file a consolidated tax return, we could use these tax benefits to offset income earned by our U.S. industrial businesses.
--Like many other financial institutions, GE Capital incurred a pre-tax loss in 2009 during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. In contrast to the 2009 results, GE’s cumulative U.S. current tax provision from 2000-2009 totaled almost $7.4 billion. GE paid almost $23 billion of taxes to governments around the world from 2000-2009, making it one of the highest payers of corporate income taxes.

--This is the first time in at least decades that GE has reported negative U.S. pretax income and it reflects the worst economy since the Great Depression

--In contrast to the 2009 results, GE’s cumulative U.S. current tax provision from 2000-2009 totaled almost $7.4 billion. GE paid almost $23 billion of taxes to governments around the world from 2000-2009, making it one of the highest payers of corporate income taxes.

@Anne from GE

I don't think he's blasting GE for not paying taxes since 2008 (which you didn't exactly refute). It's more about how we can all can get in that game. After all, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. I don't see why anyone or any company should pay taxes.

I think Steve Anderson is the one up to skullduggery.

I have no dog in the fight, but it is certainly self-serving for him to insinuate that GE has used "deception or trickery" (as skullduggery is defined in Wikipedia). The tax laws are what they are and probably not written by GE, but I'm sure I'm right in saying that Steve Anderson probably takes advantage of all the tax laws when he does his taxes.

What say Steve, is this article simply a cheap commercial for your business at GE's expense?

First, I'll admit to one error--I didn't give you the link back to the chunk of news I caught this in. I'll fix that immediately--and once you guys have the same bit of news I had when I wrote this, we'll all be able to have a good discussion. Who knows? I might even be wrong!

http://finance.yahoo.com/taxes/article/109244/what-the-top-us-companies-pay-in-taxes

What is up with posting with aliases like "Anne from GE"? For goodness sakes, if you work for the company and are going to put yourself out there, please add some credibility to your posts by identifying yourself. Signed, "Herman who used to work for Jack Welch's evil empire where he spent his his life dealing with Six Sigma."

Herman, "Anne from GE" is not an alias. It's the company-approved identification for posting responses to blogs. It means I am officially a spokesperson for the company. For the record, my name is Anne Eisele and I am director of Financial Communications at GE Corporate in Fairfield, CT. Should the writer of this blog care to fact-check items with GE prior to posting, I can be reached via our public affairs website.

Ms. Eisele--please note that a link has been posted to my source material.

GE, with the help of GE Capital, has become a master at financial chicanery. In the late 1990's, GE Capital became the engine of growth of GE, and it was all accounting gimmicks / fraud (eg., selling aircraft engines built be GE and leased out to an offshore vehicle with 4 tranches of debt and Key Bank to pay $1 for the equity, just to get the engines off of GE's books). Then, when it all blew up in 2008, GE turned around and we have this wonderful business here and why is everyone so focused on GE Capital. Now, they want us to focus on GE Capital again as they avoid their taxes. The author's advice is plain wrong because if you set up your own business and try to engage in this kind of fraud, you are going to go to jail.

Excuse me? Jeffrey, come on. My advice was to consider converting a hobby into a small business to take advantage of favorable tax deductions under the guidance of a CPA. I can't even begin to imagine where you got "commit fraud" out of THAT.