News Corp Dodges Taxes, Too

Shortly before Tax Day, I wrote a post about how General Electric was managing to rack up ginormous profits and a teeny-tiny tax bill. Lots of people, from the left and the right, complained about the unfairness of this. There was relatively calm reporting about it (e.g., The New York Times, here), and there was shrill reporting about it ("scandalous tax breaks", according to CBS's interactive business network, BNET, here; and from Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, here).

Why am I bringing this up now? Because there's a lovely new twist on the News Corp scandal.

Reuters columnist David Cay Johnston did a little extra digging, and discovered that Fox News' parent (News Corp) has not only not paid U.S. taxes in the last four years, it has made money from taxes. According to Johnston (full story, here, and at Salon, here):

Over the past four years Murdoch's U.S.-based News Corp. has made money on income taxes. Having earned $10.4 billion in profits, News Corp. would have been expected to pay $3.6 billion at the 35 percent corporate tax rate. Instead, it actually collected $4.8 billion in income tax refunds, all or nearly all from the U.S. government.

There's even a really lovely little chart, here.

OK, so Johnston might have been exaggerating a bit -- I wouldn't have "expected" News Corp to pay $3.6 billion, because virtually no company actually pays the 35% rate. But collecting $4.8 billion? Really?

Do you think that Bill O'Reilly will be as shrill in castigating his uber-boss as he was in castigating GE?

No, I don't think so either.

By the way, News Corp has now dropped its plans to buy the rest of satellite company BSkyB. Explained News Corp COO Chase Carey, the deal was simply "too difficult to progress in this climate" (full Guardian story, here). By "this climate", I think he means "this disastrous scandal", don't you?