Fairfield-based General Electric Co.’s chief says the United States needs to reform its corporate tax code and should consider eliminating all loopholes that allow companies to pay less than the statutory rate, Reuters reports.
The largest U.S. conglomerate would accept the elimination of loopholes “in a heartbeat” if it was coupled with a lowering of the statutory 35 percent rate, Jeff Immelt told a group of students on Thursday.
“Corporate tax in this country needs to be reformed,” Immelt said at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire. “Stuff that the deficit commission came up with, which was a lower corporate tax rate ending every loophole, is what we would take, with a territorial system, we would take in a heartbeat. The fact is I’d take Germany’s or Japan’s or the U.K.’s corporate tax policy today, sight unseen, without any dispute, I would take any of those tax policies today.”
A so-called Congressional “super committee” is working on a way to find another $1.2 trillion in cuts from the nation’s budget over the next decade, terms that were part of the recent deal to raise the U.S. debt limit and avoid a default. Existing tax breaks for businesses and individuals cost the government some $1 trillion per year, but Republicans may agree to cutting those if the move is coupled with a reduction in the top tax rates for companies and people.
Immelt also acknowledged the criticism the world’s largest maker of jet engines and electric turbines came under this year for its recent low tax rate. A study released in June by the left-leaning research group Citizens for Tax Justice found that GE had an effective tax rate of negative 61.3 percent in 2010, making it one of at least eight big U.S. companies to record a tax benefit rather than a bill for the year.
