GE steals from Montgomery County. Taxpayers revolt?

While facing budget cuts, including layoffs, reduction in services and reduction in tax collections– the County still insists on handing out our tax dollars to poor underprivileged corporations:

The Montgomery County Economic Development/Government Equity ED/GE Advisory Committee on Friday recommended funding eight projects, totaling $1.6 million.Among the recommended projects is $500,000 for the GE Aviation “Episcenter” in Dayton off River Park Drive. GE Aviation plans to construct a 115,000 square-foot $51 million center by mid-2011 and begin operating it by the end of 2012.GE will initially hire 10 to 15 scientists for t

via GE, other projects recommended for $1.6M in funding.

[Another ADDITION]

A $7.6 million Third Frontier grant recently helped entice General Electric to commit to a $51 million research and development center on land along River Park Drive.

via Group says bonuses tied to job growth around Wright-Patterson.

[End addition]

Just to be clear, GE has been struggling of late, with “flat earnings” on their measly $37.44 billion in sales. Their CEO, Jeff Immelt only took home a paltry $10 million, ranking him a lowly 237 on the Forbes list. He is also a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Guaranteed, Ohio won’t see a nickel of his paycheck, the Federal Government even has a hard time collecting in 2009:

General Electric filed more than 7,000 income tax returns in hundreds of global jurisdictions last year, but when push came to shove, the company owed the U.S. government a whopping bill of $0.

How’d it pull off that trick? By losing lots of money.

GE had plenty of earnings last year — just not in the United States. For tax purposes, the company’s U.S. operations lost $408 million, while its international businesses netted a $10.8 billion profit.

That left GE (GE, Fortune 500) with no U.S. profit left for Uncle Sam to tax. Corporations typically face a 35% federal income tax on their earnings. Thanks to its deductions and adjustments, GE reported an actual U.S. federal income tax rate of negative 10.5%. It got to add a “tax benefit” of $1.1 billion back into its reported earnings.

via GE: 7,000 tax returns, $0 U.S. tax bill – Apr. 16, 2010.

[ADDITION- Thanks to reader Teri L] The Fed also helped GE through the meltdown in 2008:

By the fall of 2008, credit had frozen across the financial system, including the commercial paper market. The Fed then purchased commercial paper issued by GE 12 times for a total of $16 billion.

via Fed aid in financial crisis went beyond U.S. banks to industry, foreign firms. [End ADDITION]

Why are Montgomery County tax payers contributing at all to GE’s profits? And what kind of services will we be able to provide when we have no money? And why do we pay tax dollars so the County can invest in GE? Are they giving us stock options for our investment? Is their a guaranteed return? Maybe we should be buying gold coins instead (or did we see how that turned out already?). Tax dollars are for public services- not for investment in private companies- especially ones that don’t even pay US taxes.

It’s time to have a little tea party in Dayton. It’s time to demand a stop to all redistribution of wealth by our “elected officials” to private companies. GE doesn’t need our money, we do. And until this stupidity stops- we, as small business people, should start putting our tax collections and property taxes in escrow, payable to the county once these kinds of theft stop.

The only problem will be finding a banker who would be willing to hold the account. Any takers?

If you enjoyed reading true breaking news, instead of broken news from the major media in Dayton, make sure you subscribe to this site for an email every time I post. If you wish to support this blog and independent journalism in Dayton, consider donating. All of the effort that goes into writing posts and creating videos comes directly out of my pocket, so any amount helps! Please also subscribe to the Youtube channel for notifications of every video we launch – including the livestreams.