Remember the multimillionaire New Yorker Leona Helmsley?

She started out as Lena Mindy Rosenthal but for whatever reason, she clearly didn’t like that as she changed her name to Lee Roberts, Mindy Roberts, Leni Roberts and eventually settled on Leona Mindy Roberts.

Dog lovers may remember her because when she died she left her four legged friend a $12,000,000 trust fund, a move which Fortune magazine called one of the “101 Dumbest Moments in Business.”

She was also famous for saying: “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”

Helmsley was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the United States, tax evasion, filing false personal tax returns, assisting in the filing of false corporate and partnership tax returns, and mail fraud. (1) She served 18 months in federal prison for a problem involving mere millions of dollars…

Well this week’s tax news about General Electric is just another confirmation of what Leona told us except now we’re talking about billions of dollars.

“Only the little people pay taxes.”

Last year General Electric, “… the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.”

“As a result, figures tax economist Martin Sullivan, companies are keeping some $28 billion a year out of the clutches of the U.S. Treasury by engaging in so-called transfer pricing arrangements… ”

Don’t you wish you could do that? Earn billions and not only do you not pay any income taxes, you end up with a billion dollar tax benefit?

To rent or buy this 54 minute video with Costa Rica Attorney Roger Petersen please visit our Video On Demand page here.

It wasn’t so long ago that General Electric “turned to a federal program aimed at helping companies during the global credit crisis” so one would have thought it would have been a good move – even a patriotic gesture – to at least pay some taxes.

But you would be wrong…

You see General Electric is not patriotic, they are a corporation, they won’t get charged with tax evasion, and they don’t give damn about you as a customer, you as an employee and, as one of the biggest polluters in the USA, they clearly don’t give a damn about our communities, the air we breathe or the water we all drink.

They only care about making money.

Even if they had paid only 22% on that $10.3 billion in pretax income we are talking about them avoiding US$2.266 billion dollars in taxes in what some experts might call “abusive offshore schemes.”

I appreciate that Social Security is supposedly derived from a tax on your wages but to put numbers into perspective, with the average monthly Social Security benefit being $1,050, US$2.266 billion dollars is the monthly SS payment for 2,158,095 Americans but I forget….

“Only the little people pay taxes.”

And they’re worried about retired Americans living in Costa Rica and other countries who are not paying their fair share of taxes?

“With all the hoopla over the health care bill, hardly anybody noticed that a job creation bill that President Obama signed on March 18 makes it much harder for United States citizens to avoid taxes by hiding money in overseas bank accounts.”

It continues saying that: “The federal government estimates that abusive offshore schemes by corporations cost our Treasury an estimated $30 billion in tax revenue as well.”

Easy to fix, eh? Based on the simple numbers above, with a little effort they could collect nearly 10% of that from one company – General Electric.

Robert Morgenthau, the former Manhattan district attorney who spent years cracking down on tax-avoidance schemes, commended the new law saying: “When citizens don’t pay their taxes, then other citizens have to pick up the burden.”

He added that: “It’s important that no group of people have immunity from U.S. laws, and this will go a long way to reaching these offshore accounts where U.S. citizens hide their earnings.”

Yeah, right!

Should you retire to Costa Rica, you’ll probably still pay more taxes to the US – even though you no longer live there – than you will to Costa Rica because as a foreign resident or retired person living in Costa Rica:

1. You pay zero income taxes to Costa Rica on your pension income…

2. You pay zero income taxes to Costa Rica on your Social Security income…

3. You pay zero taxes to Costa Rica on any other investment income from outside of Costa Rica and …

4. For most retired people from the US and Canada, Costa Rica property taxes are also very low.

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Written by Scott Oliver, author of 1. Costa Rica Real Estate Scams & How To Avoid Them, 2. How To Buy Costa Rica Real Estate Without Losing Your Camisa, 3. Costa Rica’s Guide To Making Money Offshore and the Director/Producer of the Costa Rica Living & Retirement – Secrets To Happiness DVDs.

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Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.