Court says G-E won’t get a tax refund

The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled General Electric is not due a half-a-million dollar refund of state income taxes. The Iowa Department of Revenue and the Iowa State Board of Tax Review both denied G-E’s request for the refund. The disagreement is over whether G-E should get a tax write-off in Iowa for the sale of a subsidiary that was located in another state. G-E was arguing it should have been able to go back in 1996 and refile its 1993 Iowa tax return to account for selling that subsidiary at a loss. The Iowa Supreme Court says no. In its ruling, the court said G-E was using an accounting maneuver with capital gains and losses to ask for a refund of taxes it never paid the state in the first place.