GE and Me

Tax day has come and gone.  My sometimes-popular wife and I are a couple grand the poorer for it.  Ouch.  Naturally we're happy to pay our fair share, but my how civic duty hurts!

Really though, it's not the money we owe that gets me.  Time and gin will heal that wound.  No, what I need is for someone to explain why a student and a lowly bookstore accountant with pennies in the bank had to cough up, while G.E., a corporation that boasts billions in annual profits, did not.  What's especially perplexing is that, ever since that infamous Supreme Court ruling that removed the restrictions on how much a corporation can donate to a political campaign, G.E. more or less counts as a citizen, just like me.*  Oh, except that, unlike me, this is one great, big, loud, rich, well-connected and highly influential citizen.

Yeah, I know the very idea of taxing a business is enough to send it running for friendlier international confines, shove our economy into a bottomless chasm and rocket unemployment to apocalyptic new heights, but come on now!  Zero taxes?  If the highest court in the land sees the corporation as a person, can't General Electric at least be asked to pay as much to Uncle Sam as the average actual living, breathing, voting citizen has to?

Or better still, can't the G.E.s of the world fork over a few million of their 14.2 billion in profits so we don't have to go after Head Start and Pell grants?

nwb



*Corporations do not qualify for McBoner status