We enable this with our silence. From Wonkette:
This is going to get repetitive, we’re afraid, but every aspect of the “financial crisis” in the United States is due to corporations not paying taxes and the very richest .01% individuals not paying taxes. That’s it, that’s the whole thing — your crumbling schools, your sinkhole highways, your abandoned state parks, the laid-off city maintenance worker . . . everything. General Electric, America’s largest corporation and the second-biggest company on Earth, simply does not pay any taxes at all. You try that! . . .
With a massive internal tax-evasion department headed by a former Treasury official and staffed with former IRS agents, G.E. is simply the best at what has become common practice for the monstrous mega-corporations that control every aspect of policy and “politics.” A half century ago, corporations paid 30% of America’s total taxes. Now it’s down to 6.6%.
And still, they whine ceaselessly about how they can barely afford to do business in America, what with the crushing burden of 6.6% taxes.
From the original story in The New York Times:
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.
Posted in Civics, corporate power, economy, Government, Plutocrats, Politics, taxes
Tagged corporate control, General Electric, government, tax cheats, US economy, US taxes
You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy. But you cannot have both.
Whatever Works 