Protesters Take Aim at Fairfield County's '1 Percent'

FAIRFIELD, Conn. – How do you get one of the world’s largest corporations to pay its taxes? For a group of protesters outside General Electric’s Fairfield headquarters Tuesday, the answer was simple. Bring it a bill, along with a dodgeball game.

About 50 protesters marched to GE’s corporate headquarters on Easton Turnpike. The Tax Day rally was meant to highlight the corporation’s reported history of paying little to no federal income taxes. The protesters claim that GE has not paid the federal government in 10 years.

“They didn’t break any laws. They wrote the laws,” said Lindsay Farrell of the Connecticut Working Families Party. “They have enough lobbying power that they get to decide what the tax code looks like.”

The Working Families Party was one of four groups that organized the march, along with the Service Employees International Union, the Connecticut Citizen Action Group and MoveOn.org. The latter group also held protests in New Haven and Danbury to protest Bank of America and other members of “the 1 percent.”

“People are starting to pay attention to the fact that big profitable corporations and the CEOs that run them are doing very well,” said Matt O’Connor, the SEIU’s Connecticut division policy director. “They’ve recovered from the Great Recession of 2008 while working families are still struggling.”

The gathered crowd shouted slogans on GE’s front lawn, including “We are the 99 percent” and “Pay your fair share.” A group threw dodgeballs at protesters dressed in sport coats and hats, symbolizing the “the 1 percent.” The words “taxes” and “U.S. Tax obligations” were scrawled across the rubber balls, calling attention to the company as “tax dodgers.”

The New York Times reported last year that, despite profits of more than $5 billion in 2010, GE paid no federal taxes. The company has countered the claims, telling the Washington Post the next week that it would “small U.S. income tax liability for 2010.”

The protesters said GE had not paid anything to the federal government in a decade. They presented a GE employee who came outside with a “bill” for $26.5 billion. The figure represents 2.3 percent of the company’s $1.66 trillion in revenue from 2001-11.

“All of the folks here paid their taxes this year,” said Tom Swan of the Connecticut Citizens Action Group. “We’re here to collect from General Electric because it’s time they paid their fair share.”  

Though the protesters are upset about GE’s federal income taxes, the company is up to date some of its taxes — those that go straight to the town of Fairfield. Its Easton Turnpike corporate headquarters is valued at more than $71 million.

At the current mill rate, the company paid the town $1.6 million in property taxes, making it the second-largest taxpayers to Fairfield. Kleban Holding Co., a local real estate developer, passed it as the largest in 2011.

“They have always paid their property taxes on a timely basis,” said Fairfield Chief Fiscal Officer Paul Hiller. “To my knowledge they’ve never been past due.”

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