TAX DODGER GENERAL ELECTRIC GETS DUPED; YES MEN SHOW CONGRESS HOW THE WORLD SHOULD WORK

Rochester, N.Y.-- With the country deeply in debt, G.E. didn't win any goodwill when it was recently reported that the company -- in addition to paying no income tax on $5.1 billion in U.S. profits -- received a $3.2 billion tax refund from the government.

The news re-energized calls for ending tax breaks for corporations and the rich to shrink the deficit, rather than drastically cut funding for programs like Medicare and Medicaid. And one aggressive advocacy group known for sticking a finger in corporate America's eye isn't ready to let it go.

So the group known as the "Yes Men" -- who in the past have successfully distributed bogus press releases, purporting to be issued from energy industry titans Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Halliburton -- placed G.E. squarely in their sights. The Yes Men distributed a press release announcing that the G.E., bowing to public outcry, would give back its supposed tax refund.

The fake release included the G.E. logo and a link to a website that looked very much like the company's official one. The Associated Press fell for it, as did USA Today (which promptly removed its story on the bogus refund refund and then ran a piece pointing out how the AP had been had).

"The AP did not follow its own standards in this case for verifying the authenticity of a news release," AP Business Editor Hal Ritter said about the gaffe.

Below is an excerpt from the fake press release:

GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt has informed the Obama administration that the company will be gifting its entire 2010 tax refund, worth $3.2 Billion, to the US Treasury on April 18, Tax Day, and will furthermore adopt a host of new policies that secure its position as a leader in corporate social responsibility.

"We want the public to know that we've heard them, and that we know many Americans are going through tough times," said GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt. "GE will therefore give our 2010 tax refund back to the public and allow the public to decide how to spend it."

Immelt acknowledged no wrongdoing. "All seven of our foreign tax havens are entirely legal," Immelt noted. "But Americans have made it clear that they deplore laws that enable tax avoidance. While we owe it to our shareholders to use every legal loophole to maximize returns — we also owe something to the American people. We didn't write the laws that let us legally avoid paying taxes. Congress did. But we benefit from those laws, and now we'd like to share those benefits. We are proud to be giving something back to America, and we are proud to set an example for all industry to follow."

The Yes Men pulled off the prank with another advocacy group known as US Uncut. "This action showed us how the world could work," US Uncut spokesperson Carl Gibson wrote on the Yes Men website. "For a brief moment people believed that the biggest corporate tax dodger had a change of heart and actually did the right thing. But the only way anything like this is really going to happen is if we change the laws that allow corporate tax avoidance in the first place."

GE's somewhat legendary in-house accounting department is stocked with former IRS agents and government officials who have, in the words of one expert, used "fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore."