General Electric is fighting back against a report by The New York Times that the company did not pay any federal taxes last year. GE called the allegations, "inaccurate," and "grossly oversimplified," and said that it did pay almost $2.7 billion in cash income taxes in 2010, and in excess of $1 billion in payroll, state and local sales and property taxes. Who's telling the truth? Louise Story, Wall Street and finance reporter for the Times, says the $2.7 billion in taxes is a global figure, which includes other countries than the U.S. And the $1 billion in state taxes paid isn't relevant, because the Times story was about GE not paying federal taxes. She also explains that GE has been fighting back against the Times' report via Twitter. They aren't disputing the facts of the story, but trying to send out their own message.
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Comments [4]
@ amalgam - Unfortunately the the show's FOCUS was not on policy but on smearing GE.
@ Steve - By the way, seems like that this segment was about one of the two topic streams you suggested, namely policy, and in this case, tax policy.
Guess talking tax policy and a legal system of US personal and corporate tax avoidance is off limits. Go figure.
The Takeaway team -
Thanks, as always, for pushing the vitally important and COMPLICATED story of economic (and societal) globalization.
We can't get enough of this considering it is one of the primary drivers of the US economy (and all economies), yet one that works from both within and without.
I still say you need to get some globalization academics/theoreticians in to give some big picture context, like Manuel Castells (network theory), Ulrich Beck (risk), Anthony Giddens (sociology), George Ritzer (convergence-McDonaldization), Stiglitz, Martin Wolf (finance), etc.
This was painful for me to listen to this morning. You should stick to news and/or policy. Slinging mud at corporations like GE wastes my time. Its programming like this that makes me want to stop contributing to public radio. You folks should be ashamed of such drivel.
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