QUESTION: tax practices of five companies

question / pregunta: 

The Occupy Boston Tax Day Working Group needs info on the tax payment history and practices of these companies:

Fidelity
State Street
USB/Deuetche/JPMorgan
GE Capital
Bank of America

How much they paid, as well as unusual ways of avoiding taxes, the carried interest loophole, benefits of the bush tax cuts to the wealthy, how much they paid tax lawyers and accountants. Thanks.

Answers

It's tricky finding information on private companies, but public ones have to open their books, and their reports are in my experience always posted to their websites. Look for "investor relations."

Fidelity is private. I can find you some financials on them via a subscription database, if you're still interested.
State Street Annual Reports
U.S. Bancorp Financial Info/SEC filings
Deutsche Bank reports
JP Morgan Annual Report and Proxy
GE financial reporting
Bank of America Investor Relations

I'm sorry that I don't actually know what to do with the financials now that I've found them. I suspect 10+ weeks later the need has expired anyway. Sorry about that.

Tax information

Hi Aria--

I don't know if you have access to academic library sources, but I ran a corporate affiliations search on Lexis Nexis that gave me some information, (just make sure that you give proper and complete named information about these companies or else you will come up with too many results!)
Orbis also is very good for this kind of information and so is Frost and Sullivan. They provide all revenue and tax information as well as a list of primary holders and their information. I think that the question is also not as straightforward as it seems-- I would maybe look at the hard numbers from Orbis and Lexis Nexis and then read a bit about tax loopholes and such and then try to consolidate this information into a single document. For information on loopholes, I think that the more current economic journal sources will work: Business Insider, Economist, and so on.
I hope this is helpful! Let me know if you cannot get access to subscription services and I can try another approach.

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