The primary theme of my blogs this week has been U.S.-based multinational corporations not paying their fair share in taxes because of their use of offshore tax havens.
On Wednesday General Electric chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt was in Greenville, SC, touring one of GE’s plants. The Associate Press reports that Mr. Immelt said that “business is good” for a huge multinational corporation like GE.
Well, business would be better for our country’s small businesses if we paid little or no taxes like GE and many other multinational corporations.
According to Business & Investors Against Tax Haven Abuse:
Between 2006 and 2010, General Electric told their shareholders they had $26.3 billion in profits, but paid no U.S. taxes. In fact, they got $4.2 billion in rebates, so their effective U.S. tax rate was negative 15.8 percent. In 2010, they reported $5.07 billion in domestic pre-tax profits and paid just $4 million in taxes. Their unpatriated taxes grew to $94 billion. GE has subsidiaries in tax havens including 3 each in Bermuda and Singapore and 1 in Luxembourg.
Heard enough and want to help do something about tax haven abuse and reform our corporate tax structure to insure that these giants pay their fair share of taxes?
Then sign these petitions and speak up.
Tax Havens: http://businessagainsttaxhavens.org/
Corporate Tax Reform: http://bit.ly/bsp_corporate_tax_reform_petition