General Electric Paid No Federal Taxes in 2010

citr

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It's a fairly common thing. Google for instances of large companies negotiating tax breaks w/ local municipalities for expanding or constructing facilities. I believe there was one in Kansas involving Boeing that was kinda notorious.
 

joyboytoy79

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but big business says if you tax me i will move and they do

They move anyway. In fact, what has happened in recent years is unprecedented tax cuts for corporations, coupled with exorbitant relocation of the workforce over seas. They have the best of all worlds. Being incorporated in the US means they can market their mostly foreign made goods in the US without paying tariffs. Making their goods overseas means they can avoid paying American wages. Having a billion loopholes means they can avoid paying US taxes.

I mean, really, when you think about it, it's better if they move so we can at least charge them tariffs!
 
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678577

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i suspect the case can be made that corporations don't pay taxes at all, for they pass on their tax bill to its customers...like u, me, all of us who buy any product from any corp. we are called the bag holders.
 
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LOL

No corporation or business pays taxes and thats the way it should be. The taxes (in a free market) are a cost of doing business.

My Father's medical practice for example charges patients a set fee based on a procedure done. within that fee is a calculation about a whole range of costs including taxes to be paid that are passed along to the consumer. what is left is profit. Sure you still have to pay tax on income that you make personally, but the business passes along its tax costs to the consumer. Dissect any business and you will find this. sure there may be a tax bill paid but that came out of the fees charged not from the pockets of the owners.
 

phillyhangin

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It seems very popular right now (well, the last 50 years) with one party in particular to stick it to "corporations." Because, by nature, they are "evil." This is nonsense. They are operated by every day people, they are owned by (GE is a public company) everyday people, they employ everyday people, they are supported by customers who are...you guessed it, everyday people.
But by the very structure of the corporation, these everyday people who own and operate the corporation are divorced from the long-term, long-range consequences of the decisions they make, which creates a moral hazard and causes them to focus on extracting wealth in the short term instead of creating wealth in the long term (as capitalism requires). And "supported by customers" is a bit of an exaggeration - it's more that customers have to shop somewhere, and when all of the choices are big corporations, that's where they end up going; it's not by choice, but the result of lack of choices.

In fact, employee retirement funds hold trillions in stock of corporations.
Only because companies "invest" their employees' 401k contributions in their own stocks. I've worked for several large corporations where my 401k plan consisted mainly of the stock issued by the company I worked for; this wasn't my choice, it was an arrangement between the company and the 401k fund manager they hired. Again, not by choice, but the result of lack of choices.

Then, they presume that the "corporation" can own or hold money. This simply isn't true. A corporation is a legal fiction, it doesn't really exist except that we all agree it does. By virtue of it not actually existing it cannot hold money.
I agree that corporations are legal fictions, however, the owners (or rather the boards of directors) of those legal fictions have fought tooth and nail (and sometimes cloak and dagger) to get those legal fictions declared "persons," with an existence independent of their owners. Under US jurisprudence (based on a deliberate misrepresentation of a court ruling), these "persons" can own assets; the corporation's shareholder-owners cannot touch those assets (unlike sole proprietors or partners) until the corporation "dies," and then they only get what's left over after the creditors have picked the carcass clean. The most a corporate shareholder-owner can do is sell his or her stock, but that sale of stock does not remove assets from the corporation (unless the corporation is buying the stock back), and the selling price of the stock is not based on its actual redemption value (the book value of the corporation divided by the number of outstanding shares), it's based on whatever stock market traders are willing to pay for it, and that is based largely on the ability of the corporate managers to hype the corporation (usually through shady accounting - think Enron - or by inflating the company's book value - see below).

Either the money is paid out in returns to shareholders, or is spent as costs. There is no magical GE walking amongst us that gets to keep all that cash. The shareholders, together, own all the assets. So, no matter where they put the money, a real person owns it.
Dividends are treated as expenses by corporations, so corporations do not always pay dividends out of their profits; instead, the board of directors chooses to "reinvest" the profits back into the corporation, sometimes to fuel expansion, sometimes to increase the company's book value (usually right before the company goes on sale), or oftentimes merely to inflate the corporation's profits to make the company's stock seem more attractive (and thus raise its trading value). And, as I mentioned above, the real people who own the company's stocks cannot touch the company's assets until it "dies."
Further, these "evil" companies are only as evil as the consumer lets them be. If you think Wal-Mart is evil then stop shopping there. Go to "honest" Whole Foods (honestly charging double for some identical goods).
That's not exactly true either. Large companies distort markets around them, which has a ripple effect on any competitors that haven't been run out of business. Consumers don't really have a choice when large chains are the only choices left and all of those chains are distorting markets to suit their short-term growth goals regardless of the long-term impact of their actions. Competition - fair, level-playing-field competition - is the heart of capitalism; anti-competitive, market-distorting behemoths are not. Throw in the fact that the boards of directors of the corporations use corporate resources to influence the political process in favor of their legal fictions, and consumers have very little say in the matter of what large corporations can and cannot get away with; simply shopping at one large corporation instead of another has little effect on the underlying oligarchy dynamic.
 
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678577

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for those that have not read NYTimes best seller list ATLAS SHRUGGED Ayn Rand...
buy the large print or cd and get ramped up
 
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678577

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LOL

No corporation or business pays taxes and thats the way it should be. The taxes (in a free market) are a cost of doing business.

My Father's medical practice for example charges patients a set fee based on a procedure done. within that fee is a calculation about a whole range of costs including taxes to be paid that are passed along to the consumer. what is left is profit. Sure you still have to pay tax on income that you make personally, but the business passes along its tax costs to the consumer. Dissect any business and you will find this. sure there may be a tax bill paid but that came out of the fees charged not from the pockets of the owners.
thanks for the back up and validation...seems that some of these members don't own their own business. if they did, these stupid ass comments would not be posted.
 

D_Bob_Crotchitch

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That's not exactly true either. Large companies distort markets around them, which has a ripple effect on any competitors that haven't been run out of business. Consumers don't really have a choice when large chains are the only choices left and all of those chains are distorting markets to suit their short-term growth goals regardless of the long-term impact of their actions. Competition - fair, level-playing-field competition - is the heart of capitalism; anti-competitive, market-distorting behemoths are not. Throw in the fact that the boards of directors of the corporations use corporate resources to influence the political process in favor of their legal fictions, and consumers have very little say in the matter of what large corporations can and cannot get away with; simply shopping at one large corporation instead of another has little effect on the underlying oligarchy dynamic.

Can anyone say WALMART!
 

B_VinylBoy

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thanks for the back up and validation...seems that some of these members don't own their own business. if they did, these stupid ass comments would not be posted.

Some do, and they still don't agree with you or willhorse. I'm a prime example. I've owned two businesses. One for web and my current which is rooted in the entertainment industry.

Now about these "stupid ass comments"... I would guess you might feel a bit idiotic for making such mindless assumptions that are equivalent to the same bantering slander you just spewed? But maybe you just don't have feelings? We'll start with there before we go to other necessary functioning parts of the human anatomy. :rolleyes:
 

phillyhangin

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thanks for the back up and validation...seems that some of these members don't own their own business. if they did, these stupid ass comments would not be posted.
Some of us do - and manage to do just nicely, thank you. We just happen to run our businesses differently - focusing on the long-term economic stability of the communities we serve, and not on how much money we can extract before we move on. The more stable your community, the more stable your company and the more money you earn in the long-run; chasing short-term profits exposes you to short-term fluctuations in the market and can compromise your long-term earnings potential.

Phrased another way, you can either eat all of the fruit today and have nothing tomorrow (forcing you to move on), or you can plant some of the fruit today (reinvesting in the local economy) and have an ongoing harvest.
 

phillyhangin

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Some do, and they still don't agree with you or willhorse. I'm a prime example. I've owned two businesses. One for web and my current which is rooted in the entertainment industry.
Beat me to it again! I must've been typing at the same time you were. :redface:
 

FuzzyKen

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Major Corporations have been getting sweet deals and then throwing the screws to the people for decades.

When I lived in Palm Springs, California there was a monster issue over a Wal-Mart store. What happened was that Wal-Mart made many promises to adjoining Cathedral City in order to receive special tax consideration for building a store in that city. Before all of the Wal-Mart benefits and tax incentives expired Wal-Mart cut a deal and closed that particular store moving it about 7 miles East into the City Limits of Palm Desert, California. They then left the people of the City of Cathedral City hung out on all of the taxes because Cathedral City in expectation of a reward for what they did expected a reward for the tax exemptions when they ended. Wal-Mart never did pay dime number one to Cathedral City, California and the building is now a relatively new (less than 15 years old) white elephant shuttered and vacant.

For decades we have had leadership on all levels that has bought into the rhetoric of false promises made by Corporate America to a city in order to open retail outlets in the cities where they feel there is a market. Wal-Mart had set multiple precedents in Riverside County having done the same thing to the City of Hemet as well several years before they threw the screws to Cathedral City.

Some Cities have enacted laws or ordinances keeping Wal-Mart out while welcoming many other retailers.

The activities of General Electric are in no way a surprise at all. They are but one of many corporations who have successfully manipulated things to not pay their fair share. They are successful simply because they as a group know that they have the United States Taxpayer to pay the share the Corporation did not.

Now with regards to taxation and tax incentives and their influence on the exportation of American Jobs.

There are numerous ways to prevent job losses and job exportation. The problem is that the politicians you and I elect will never defend the Average American simply because they have been out of touch with who American Citizens and American Workers are for so many decades.

I have owned several businesses. I am not a retailer, but I am aware of Corporate Tax Structure and I am aware of how some, but not all Corporations play the game in order to not pay their fair share.

The main problem with Corporate America is that when a person under that definition does not do the right thing, we the citizens not only pay our share of taxes, we pay their share too.

This is a disaster where major corporations can easily qualify for billions of dollars on corporate welfare, but a 60 year old kidney transplant patient cannot receive disability payments that they paid into when they were able to work, no matter what is presented in court.
 

liberalcynic

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but big business says if you tax me i will move and they do

Tax for operating in the market,
Who else will they sell stuff for?
Nigeria? Mali? they're not going anywhere if you construct good taxation law.
 

midlifebear

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for those that have not read NYTimes best seller list ATLAS SHRUGGED Ayn Rand...
buy the large print or cd and get ramped up

LOL! I am literally laughing out loud. I read (along with my friends) Atlas Shrugged when I was in 7th grade and remember bumper stickers on the backs of Chryslers and Buicks when Kennedy ran for President mysteriously asking, "Who is John Galt?"

If you're so educationally latent that you've just discovered Ayn Rand, well, I feel sorry for you. Better you should read the non-Bowdlerized versions of Shakespeare's Complete Works and acquire some superior wisdom than ruminate over the concept of a dystopian world where "The Man" is preventing an individual to be free to create and fulfill his (or her) potential. And while your at it, get a handle on fairy tails and read The Tao of Physics. It's a bit out-of-date, but a winner.

Passenger train service went out of business more than 50 years ago in the USA and it wasn't "the Man" that caused it. Ayn Rand, as a visionary, certainly picked the wrong industry as a metaphor for her magnum opus. She should have named her solipsitic ouvre The Big Train That Couldn't. :biggrin1:

Atlas shrugged has fallen in and out of popularity since it was first published in 1957. Currently it's getting attention from a new generation of people who most likely didn't have the reading skills to pay attention in intermediate school to know what was going on around them. I recently had a 20-something pseudo-student argue that Atlas Shrugged must be a great book full of wisdom if it has been so popular for so long. I countered if he felt the same way about Gone With the Wind.

Maybe you should pick up a copy of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth too, if you're so enamoured with Ayn Rand. It's at about the same level of the Gunning Fog Index.
 
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B_Boy_Boy_Boy

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You forgot about one simple accounting 101 line called retained earnings. GE does not pay out all the profits it makes in dividends, nor does it spend the remaining money. Apple has billions in cash on its balance sheet, By stating this argument you show yourself as very naive and ignorant of the facts.

If you think that Jeff Immelt is an every day person you really need to take a step back and take a reality check,
So, if the business closes tomorrow, where does that money go? Does it evaporate?
 

B_Boy_Boy_Boy

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But by the very structure of the corporation, these everyday people who own and operate the corporation are divorced from the long-term, long-range consequences of the decisions they make, which creates a moral hazard and causes them to focus on extracting wealth in the short term instead of creating wealth in the long term (as capitalism requires). And "supported by customers" is a bit of an exaggeration - it's more that customers have to shop somewhere, and when all of the choices are big corporations, that's where they end up going; it's not by choice, but the result of lack of choices.
No. Little companies turn into large ones because people choose to shop there. We didn't just start with a multi-billion dollar Wal-Mart. Sam Walton started with a single store (a mom and pop, believe it) in a town with 3,000 people. Just looking around here, if people hate Wal-Mart (which is packed almost all day) they have lots of other options.

Short term focus? Like IBM who has been around for 100 years. Clearly playing fast and loose with their future. Some companies, absolutely. All companies, no.

Only because companies "invest" their employees' 401k contributions in their own stocks. I've worked for several large corporations where my 401k plan consisted mainly of the stock issued by the company I worked for; this wasn't my choice, it was an arrangement between the company and the 401k fund manager they hired. Again, not by choice, but the result of lack of choices.
Sounds a little shady to me. You should call your 401k administrator and negotiate another option. If it is truly a lack of options then you'll have no trouble getting support for more options. In almost all cases where a company requires you to buy their stock there is a holding period, after which you can make a change.

I agree that corporations are legal fictions
Its a legal fact, you don't have to agree or disagree.

however, the owners (or rather the boards of directors) of those legal fictions have fought tooth and nail (and sometimes cloak and dagger) to get those legal fictions declared "persons," with an existence independent of their owners.
Thats the legal fiction.

Under US jurisprudence (based on a deliberate misrepresentation of a court ruling), these "persons" can own assets;
Which case would this be?

As far as rights go, that depends entirely on 1) the by-laws and charter, and 2) the laws of the state of incorporation. If you don't want to be involved in a corporation such as you describe, then don't buy their stock. There are many companies that have extensive protections for stock holders. On top of all this, shareholders have voting rights, which allows them to change just about anything.


And, as I mentioned above, the real people who own the company's stocks cannot touch the company's assets until it "dies."
Again, that depends on the company. If this type of arrangement bothers you I suggest you either don't buy stocks, or invest only in companies that have more agreeable dividend arrangements.

Consumers don't really have a choice when large chains are the only choices left and all of those chains are distorting markets to suit their short-term growth goals regardless of the long-term impact of their actions.
This is more proganda than fact. There are many choices. Just because the chains are the most visable doesn't mean its the only choice. Further, there are MANY choices within a given market for a given good. If you don't like one company you can go to another. If that doesn't work you can do without. Simply saying "I want it" doesn't entitle you to endless choices from companies that you find ethical. If you don't like car companies, ride a bike. Don't like bike companies, walk; ect ect ect.

Competition - fair, level-playing-field competition - is the heart of capitalism; anti-competitive, market-distorting behemoths are not.
This is true.

Throw in the fact that the boards of directors of the corporations use corporate resources to influence the political process in favor of their legal fictions, and consumers have very little say in the matter of what large corporations can and cannot get away with; simply shopping at one large corporation instead of another has little effect on the underlying oligarchy dynamic.
I disagree strongly, where you put your money makes all the difference.

There is nothing wrong with a corporation, or any group of individuals acting together, influencing the political process in a representational democracy. Thats the point.
 
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