LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The fact that General Electric paid no taxes was common knowledge earlier this year. However, the size of its tax return first came to light when House budget committee chairman Paul Ryan (R, Wisc.) made the case for corporate tax reform at a recent town hall meeting.

"GE was able to utilize all of these various loopholes, all of these various deductions -- it's legal," Ryan said. One of the biggest loopholes was the fact that Nine billion dollars of GE's profits came overseas, outside the jurisdiction of U.S. tax law.

In addition, GE wasn't taxed on $5 billion in U.S. profits as it utilized numerous deductions and tax credits, including tax breaks for investments in low-income housing, green energy, research and development and depreciation of property.

"I asked the GE tax officer, 'How long was your tax form?'" Ryan said. "He said, 'Well, we file electronically, we don't measure in pages.'" When asked for an estimate, a stunning 57,000 pages was proffered. Audible gasps from the crowd were heard at the town hall meeting when Ryan revealed this.

A tax lawyer who represents GE, Ken Kies, confirmed to newspaper journalists that the tax return would have been 57,000 pages had it been filed on paper. The size of GE's tax return has more than doubled in the last five years.

Ryan used the data point to underscore the irrationality of the corporate income tax code, contrasting GE with UPS to make the point that the corporate income tax code doesn't make sense.

"UPS paid a 34 percent effective tax rate," while its biggest foreign competitor, DHL, paid a 24 percent tax rate, Ryan said.

"Republicans and Democrats, both parties, sit in Congress and they're picking winners and losers," Ryan said.

The most cogent solution according to Ryan would be to "Get rid of those loopholes and lower tax rates by a corresponding amount. Don't lose revenue, but for every loophole you pull out, and deny a company from being able to get this little carves out, you can lower the rates so we can be more competitive with our competitors overseas. We want to stem the bleeding of jobs going overseas, of foreign companies buying U.S. companies and taking headquarters overseas."

Ryan is hopeful the president will work with Republicans on corporate tax reform. "This is the one thing I think we've got some bipartisan agreement on," he said.

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