Banks // Current TV

Who Owns Your State's Members of Congress?

Interesting data. Click the link for interactive map. *** MapLight has conducted... more

maasanova
added this
12 days ago
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8 comments

Private Central Banking Cartel Prepares To Print More Federal Reserve Notes

"Quantitative easing (QE) is an unconventional monetary policy used by central... more

maasanova
added this
15 days ago
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0 comments

President Obama's State of the Union: Ten Skirted Issues

confess; I expected to be bored out of my mind listening to President Obama’s... more

maasanova
added this
16 days ago
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1 comment

Iceland Declares Independence from International Banks

Iceland is free. And it will remain so, so long as her people wish to remain... more

TaGgInUrBlOcKuP
added this
19 days ago
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42 comments

Bank penalizes kid with $4.85 in his account by charging him $234.95 in fees in two weeks

A young man left $4.85 in his TCF Bank account. TCF assessed him a $9.95... more

misfit20
added this
2 months ago
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0 comments

Jon Corzine Fingers Mr. Potter; Says Life's Not So Wonderful

Washington DC - Failed hedge fund CEO Jon Corzine yesterday called on a House... more

mbalton
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2 months ago
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0 comments

If we'd only bought Apple and Google and gold instead of our 401k ...

What people want Cenk to discuss - consistently 'how banksters have destroyed... more

donburnham
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2 months ago
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0 comments

Coal study names top 20 "climate killer" banks

Financing coal is controversial, because it is the dirtiest fossil fuel and... more

JanforGore
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2 months ago
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2 comments

Obama: Banks Broke No Laws

Obama: Banks Broke No Laws http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dty1ejhvexM&feature=related

CarlosBobthe3rd
added this
2 months ago
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6 comments

Venezuela pulls Gold Reserves from Western banks

The gold was escorted through Caracas by troops and armoured vehicles. It was... more

worrg
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2 months ago
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0 comments

Article: World Bank partners with Nestlé to ‘transform water sector’

... the creeps at the World Bank are out to take over the world water, how's that... more

frankpatton
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2 months ago
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0 comments

Thrive Movement Documentary: The Scheme For Global Domination

The Thrive Documentary puts global elite domination in the spotlight, in the quest for... more

livegreenordie
added this
3 months ago
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0 comments

Why Iceland Should Be in the News But Is Not

An Italian radio program’s story about Iceland’s on-going revolution is a... more

worrg
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3 months ago
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12 comments

General Electric's (G.E.) 57,000 Page Tax Return

The 57,000 Page Tax Return
by Alex Tabarrok

The NYTimes reported earlier this year that through an extraordinary use of tax breaks and clever accounting:

[General Electric] 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.

The Times highlighted the skill of GE’s dream team:

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. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

More recently from The Weekly Standard we find what kind of effort it takes to pay no taxes on $14 billion in profits:

General Electric, one of the largest corporations in America, filed a whopping 57,000-page federal tax return earlier this year but didn’t pay taxes on $14 billion in profits. The return, which was filed electronically, would have been 19 feet high if printed out and stacked.

(FYI, the length of GE’s tax return has doubled since 2006 when it (first?) filed electronically at an equivalent of 24,000 pages.)

GE’s tax bill illustrates both why our corporate tax rate is too high and too low. The nominal rate is too high which encourages a real rate which is too low.

Consider the resources that GE spends to lowers its tax bill, not just the many millions spent on clever accounting and accountants and the many millions spent on lobbying but also the many inefficient ways that GE structures its businesses just to avoid paying taxes and the many millions it invests in socially wasteful projects just in order to produce privately valuable tax credits. Now add to that the allocational inefficiencies of taxing some firms at different rates than others and you have a corporate tax system which wastes a lot of resources and raises relatively little revenue. Indeed, a corporate tax system with a tax rate of zero could well be preferable as it would waste fewer resources and raise not much less revenue.

Hat tip: TaxProf blog.The 57,000 Page Tax Return by Alex Tabarrok The NYTimes reported earlier this... more