Don't Hate Me Because I'm Multinational

Is it me, or is this a bad time for a company to be seen publicly haggling over its tax bill?

General Electric doesn't seem too concerned. The world's second largest company has spent months bickering with New Hampshire on money matters, even taking its tax tiff all the way to the nation's top court.

According to the G.E., New Hampshire tax law unconstitutionally discriminates against foreign commerce by giving tax breaks to some, but not all, foreign subsidiaries of multinational parent companies.

Oooooohhhh, the humanity!

The Supreme Court of New Hampshire didn't see eye to eye with G.E. on the supposed "constitutional issues" and neither does the U.S. Supreme Court, which today declined to hear G.E.'s case at all.

Under New Hampshire tax law, dividends paid to a parent company by its foreign subsidiaries are considered taxable profit. However, the dividends are exempt from state tax if the foreign subsidiary does business in (and therefore pays tax to) the state. The exemption is New Hampshire's way of ensuring income isn't double-taxed.

But G.E. is a glass-half-empty kind of company, and rather than appreciating the exemptions, it's up in arms over what taxes it's still stuck paying.

If General Electric is having a hard time recruiting allies into its corner, it's because now is not the best time to be seen helping Goliath whoop David where fiscal obligations are concerned.

Private equity firms and hedge funds are coming under fire for their low tax rates; corporate executives are being maligned as greedy and overpaid; shady accounting practices like illegal stock option backdating continue to surface, casting "The Man" in a less than positive light.

Even the business-friendly Bush administration has come out against G.E. in this issue, with the U.S. Solicitor General and Attorney General having submitted an amicus brief recommending that the Supreme Court deny the company's petition for the case to be heard.

As adversaries go, New Hampshire doesn't make a particularly good villain. According to The Tax Foundation, a non-partisan educational organization, New Hampshire ranks seventh amongst U.S. states for best corporate income tax climate.

The state also has one of the most generous overall tax policies in the nation, including no sales tax or personal income tax on residents.

New Hampshire has already, as of August 17, repealed the section of the tax law that pertains to G.E.'s case. So, the supposedly "discriminatory" inconsistency has already been erased altogether.

But the pièce de résistance—as if G.E.'s case could be any less compelling: The total dollar value of back taxes in question is just shy of $3.2 million.

To put that in perspective, General Electric made $163 billion in 2006 and filed the United States' single largest tax return for that year.

In other words, $3.2 million isn't a tax burden for G.E., it's more on the level of an accounting rounding error.

by Liz Gunnison