and reading about the implications of this chart supplied by the IRS
paid zero-zip-zilch in corporate 2010 income tax even though they had worldwide revenues of 14.2 billion.
Tax Avoidance at Work
OUTRAGE and envy still ripple from a report in The New York Times that General Electric, the nation's largest corporation, paid no U.S. corporate taxes in 2010.
GE did not break the law, but the bill it successfully avoided was picked up by the rest of us, or put on the national credit card.
The top U.S. corporate rate is 35 percent, but virtually no one pays that. GE's tax rate is about a third of what other companies pay, and that the company is vulnerable to pay any taxes is hypothetical. GE would have to return profits to these shores from places it set up to avoid taxes.
Policymakers in Washington, D.C., need to reassess rates to bring them into line with the financial realities of the nation and basic equity. Set lower, unavoidable rates that do not complicate job creation, and have a statutory imperative to collect them. As it is now, the higher the rate, the more creative the credits, shelters and loopholes to avoid compliance.
GE has a team of 975 gilded tax-avoidance professionals in a department working to ensure that the rest of America picks up its tab. Oh, and that default jobs-creation rationale? The Times report also noted that since 2002, GE has eliminated a fifth of its work force in the U.S.
All of this is legal of course.
Here we have Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE explaining it all to our President.
And on the topic of our POTUS
Guess who's coming for dinner?
Well not with me but with a group of his Hollywood friends paying $38,000 each for the honor.
I am totally fine with the Los Angeles Entertainment money paying the big bucks to start off Obama's 2012 campaign....but did they have to do it here?
Couldn't they have all jetted off to Washington DC for the event....
I mean they all have their own jets don't they?
Pretty much the entire Westside from Beverly Hills to Brentwood is going to be in a traffic standstill.
Traffic here is bad enough without shutting down Wilshire and the 405, one of the busiest intersections in the entire US.
And if that isn't enough to annoy me
there is the small matter of US debt
Can I move to Australia?