Leona Helmsley, the late New York City billionaire hotel heiress, famously said, “Only the little people pay taxes.”

In the corporate world, General Electric, the largest U.S. corporation, has a similar view, except that those who pay taxes are companies with less-sophisticated tax experts and less-powerful lobbyists.

A recent New York Times article revealed that GE employs a team of accountants, lawyers, former officials from the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service as well as an army of lobbyists to reduce its tax liability to the federal government.

GE is famous for making products ranging from washing machines, refrigerators and light bulbs to nuclear reactors, advanced medical equipment and locomotive engines. It also focuses on tax avoidance, all legal, to the degree that its tax department is a profit center — adding billions of dollars to the bottom line for shareholders. The well-respected company is also top-rate when it comes to working the complexities of the federal tax code to reduce or eliminate its tax bill.

GE earned $14.2 billion in profits in 2010, with about $5.1 billion coming from U.S. operations. Not only did the company not pay any federal income tax in 2010, it claimed a $3.2 billion refund.

The company takes advantage of lower tax rates in other countries to minimize the corporate profits exposed to U.S. taxes. This strategy is employed by other multinational companies, but experts say GE is the best at working the system.

Earning billions of dollars in profits, but paying no federal income tax, the GE story confirms that something is terribly wrong with the U.S. tax code. The latest proposals for tax reform call for eliminating many loopholes and exemptions, while lowering rates, including the corporate tax rate. Such a move would help many smaller companies, but it probably would mean that big-time tax avoiders like GE would pay more taxes. As a result, GE and other large multinational corporations will launch lobbying efforts in Washington to keep the current system in place.

According to a study by Reuters News Service, about 57 percent of U.S. companies paid no federal income taxes for one year or more during the period between 1998 and 2005.

Something similar to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) that is aimed at individual taxpayers should be in place for corporate giants like GE, so that these big companies pay some federal tax on billions of dollars of profit.

A better solution, though, would be to reform and simplify the tax code, eliminating most loopholes. It makes sense to retain the Research and Development tax credit to encourage innovation. In addition to R&D credits, there might be a few other broadly applied tax breaks with broad benefits worth keeping. But the current tax code is compared to “swiss cheese” — full of tax breaks inserted by lawmakers responding to campaign contributions or corporate lobbying.

The problem with many tax breaks now in the tax code is that they are narrowly targeted to benefit a few, powerful corporate interests. These can be seen as another form of earmark spending because they are the result of lobbying and benefit a few, generally well-connected entities. Tax breaks are essentially spending, because they must be paid for — by other taxpayers paying to make up the lost federal revenue.

General Electric’s tax avoidance is not illegal, but that doesn’t make it right. In fact, the company is doing what’s best for shareholders — maximizing profits. Unfortunately, that harms other, less-creative and influential taxpayers.

Tax reform to ensure that every taxpayer — corporate or individual — pays a fair share, should be a top agenda item in Washington, D.C. And now is a good time to send the message to Congress as April 18, this year’s deadline for filing federal income taxes, approaches.