General Electric: Proudly Leading The Way In Evading Corporate Taxes Since The 1970s

It's funny, the things people care about wouldn'tcha say? Like how, despite evidence, facts, and an actual live certificate of birth, a whole segment of the population (typically the toothless white trash trailer park type) still refuses to believe a one Barack Hussein Obama was born anywhere but deepest darkest Africa if he was even born on this planet at all instead of secretly sprung from the Socialist loin of Satan in his real birth place down in the seventh circle of hell, as any Teabagger worth his weight in Lipton understands.

But try telling these very same people that the path to Socialist ruin isn't paved with dead Grandmas, greedy, fair-wage demanding teachers, terrible, no-good workers unions, or even lousy job-stealing immigrants, but rather that every single aspect of the financial crisis in the United States is directly due to both huge corporations and the very richest .01% individuals not paying taxes, and it's as if you've just said all KFCs have turned into organic arugula gardens and all McDonald's will now be referred to as MosqeDonalds with Halal Meals replacing Happy Meals.

"You lie!" they shriek, doing their best inappropriate Joe Wilson outburst.

Impossible! It's simply too outrageous to be true. It couldn't possibly be! Liars!

But what if it turned out not to be just another liberal lie from the elitist Jew-run lamestream media?

What if basically everything — your bankrupt schools, crumbling highways, falling bridges, neglected state parks, vast graveyards of foreclosed homes, shuttered storefronts, abandoned construction sites, the laid-off city maintenance worker who jumped off the roof of City Hall in Cosa Mesa after half the town's workforce was fired and replaced by outsourced hourly contractors, including a new $3,000 a week PR spokesman the mayor hired — was more than coincidentally related to the the fact that General Electric, America’s largest corporation and the second-biggest company on Earth, simply does not pay any taxes at all. None, nada, nil, nothing. Zip, zero, zilch.

I mean, it's not as if they use their awesome new top-of-the-line front load Energy Star washer/dryer unit to launder their dirty sexy stacks of money or anything illegal/ ike that. No, no, don't be silly!

They just so happen to be as wonderfully skilled in mass producing state-of-the-art stainless steel kitchen appliances, incandescent/florescent/LED light bulbs, military jet engines, wind turbines, oil drilling pipes and nuclear weapons, as they are in evading U.S. taxes.

Woohoo!

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for evading damming articles by intrepid New York Times reporters that could quite possibly be the most infuriating, dull number-crunching piece you'll ever read.

General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.
The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.
Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.
That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E.

Well, I should certainly hope so!

The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.

Phew! How else would they make ends meet? Other than binding two poor people together with their industrial grade duct tape, of course!

Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm...and includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

Which is great news for the poor, struggling billionaire General Electric executives slaving away to bring you all the innovate, prohibitively expensive products you don't need nor want, and couldn't afford anyway.

Because with its massive internal tax-evasion department headed by a former Treasury official and stuffed with former IRS agents, G.E. is simply the standard bearer of excellence when it comes to monstrous mega-corporations that control almost every aspect of policy and politics, duping the schmucky public into paying the lion's share of federal taxes.

You see, a half century ago, back in the 1950s (the good old days John Boehner's always weeping for), when women knew their place and men weren't afraid to give toots a li'l slap on the behind when she got too fresh, corporations like GE paid a whopping 30% of America’s total taxes. Today that number is down to 6.6%, and yet these same lovely corporations whine incessantly about how the crushing burden of single digit tax rates are squeezing companies to the breaking point, where they can barely afford to do business in America anymore.

Which isn't the worst that could happen, considering no one can afford to buy anything in America anymore, either.

Oh well! Thank goodness Republicans understand how to solve this glaring fiscal disparity.

By defunding NPR, removing art murals from state labor departments, and clamping down on those out-of-control, greedy, minimum-wage earning teachers, janitors, and assembly line workers bringing the whole country down.

For the love of unchecked capitalism, how do you expect GE's golden parachutes to fly with all that dead weight?

Because at GE, We Don't Just "Bring Good Things To Life," We "Bring Good Tax Dodges To Light!"