Is G.E. Tax Dodging?

To The Editor:
I once wrote about G.E. with their slogan that I loved. It said “At General Electric Progress is our most important product.” Now G.E. is in the headlines again! Our country is asking everyone to help with shared sacrifice to cope with multibillion-dollar budget deficits. Everyone must do their part by giving up some essential programs. Some say G.E. the global conglomerate has made tax dodging its chief business.
The word is out that G.E. amassed $27 billion in profits just from its American operations- and paid exactly zero in taxes. Jack Welch, the former CEO of G.E., has been out since 2000 but paid his share of the cost for public services and took very good care of their investors. Now G.E. has used its army of tax lawyers and lobbyists to get what amounts to a government payment of more than $4 billion from us taxpayers.
Wow, that money could keep a lot of fire fighters, police and teachers on the job.
The tax code is not the only thing manipulated by this giant corporation. G.E. is doing its own whack job on its workers by demanding that they agree to cuts in union wages, pensions, and health coverage. It’s a concerted effort by corporate elites and their politicians to crush America’s middle class.
Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009, paid no federal income taxes, and got $156 million rebate from the IRS.
Only 6.6 percent of our nation’s tax revenue comes from corporations- down from 30 percent in the 1950s.
The tax breaks over the past decade for G.E. to pay no taxes at all were supposed to lead to job creation, but just the opposite has occurred.
As the Wall Street Journal put it, the multinational companies cut their work forces by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce show.
Big government, the devil that Republicans love to inveigh against is big precisely because it is so active in so many costly ways in serving the interests of our biggest corporations.
We must make them pay their full taxes or our government will fail in the long run.
Average American,
John T. Nickoless
Bennettsville, SC