It's worth a look, if only to see how something as complex as GE's long-developed tax-minimization strategy gets explained by skilled reporters bent on breaking it down into simple components for a general audience.

The report examines how GE, like many companies, treats tax avoidance as a "profit center," but unlike most, tasks nearly a thousand employees with the mission. ProPublica calculates that 2008 and 2009 reported profits were boosted by about $1 billion because of a change in how GE treated some overseas earnings, for example. Often, the people charged with reducing taxes include former IRS employees it hires --- using a sort of revolving door similar to what exists between the Pentagon and defense contractors (including, of course, GE.)

The article also notes that GE CEO .

In addition, the story looks at GE's "active finance exemption," designed to let its overseas lending activities stay untaxed in the U.S. "It is so important to GE that the company discloses in its financial reports the periodic need for this tax break to be renewed by Congress," says ProPublica.

Another focus on GE's tax strategy involves how it takes advantage of the irony of the "American Jobs Creation Act of 2004," which gave tax breaks to companies that located jobs overseas. "It actually led GE to shift some of its aviation leasing operations to Ireland in order to qualify for a tax deferral," the story notes, saving the company hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes annually.