GE Taxes

• General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010. 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.
  

• Which prompted this response from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI):

  Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), when asked about GE’s zero percent tax rate today on CNBC, replied that the real problem is the U.S. corporate tax rate is too high:

  We have to be concerned about what the business environment is in the U.S. here. We can’t afford to have the highest tax rate in the world…Those are individual companies. I think overall, we really can’t be looking at a corporate tax rate much higher than 25 percent because that’s the world average. So we’re sitting up there at 35 percent, that’s just the wrong signal.