According to a recent New York Times article, despite General Electric's success in 2010, the corporation paid no taxes and actually received a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. This is due to a combination of the corporation's aggressive lobbying and the corporation's accounting strategy. The following charts included in the article illustrates General Electric's success in tax reduction, showing both General Electric's profits and decrease in tax burden:

As the article also points out, the US corporate tax rate is among the highest in the world and is as large as 35% for some corporations. Because of this, corporations, like General Electric, are becoming increasingly saavy in reducing their tax burden through tax law loopholes, keeping profits offshore and other accounting mechanisms. There have been some complaints from corporations that the corporate tax rate is too high and that it is limiting their international competitiveness. This has lead President Obama to announce that he is considering an "overhaul" in the corporate tax system although cuts might be delayed by increasing efforts to cut the budget deficit. Posted by Brittany