Thursday Afternoon Rant

So a week after writing my checks to the black hole government
and reading about the implications of this chart supplied by the IRS

I have to read that our friends over at General Electric
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?

This Is So Money!

As most of us are dealing with paying our hard earned money to our friends in the federal government 
who as we know never saw a dollar of tax revenue that they couldn't spend in spades...
I thought that this hoax press release was brilliant

Hoax Press Release Targets GE Tax Controversy

As we all know, GE paid no income tax on 5.1 Billion in US profits
in fact they received a 3.2 Billion tax refund!
Lucky them.

Here's an excerpt from the faux release
GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt has informed the Obama administration that the company will be gifting its entire 2010 tax refund, worth $3.2 Billion, to the US Treasury on April 18, Tax Day, and will furthermore adopt a host of new policies that secure its position as a leader in corporate social responsibility.
"We want the public to know that we've heard them, and that we know many Americans are going through tough times," said GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt. "GE will therefore give our 2010 tax refund back to the public and allow the public to decide how to spend it."
Immelt acknowledged no wrongdoing. "All seven of our foreign tax havens are entirely legal," Immelt noted. "But Americans have made it clear that they deplore laws that enable tax avoidance. While we owe it to our shareholders to use every legal loophole to maximize returns — we also owe something to the American people. We didn't write the laws that let us legally avoid paying taxes. Congress did. But we benefit from those laws, and now we'd like to share those benefits. We are proud to be giving something back to America, and we are proud to set an example for all industry to follow."

Of course, the AP fell for it!
The fake release included the G.E. logo and a link to a slick website that looked very much like the company's official one. The Associated Press fell for it, as did USA Today (the paper promptly removed its story, and then ran a piece pointing out how the AP had fallen for the prank).