allan sloan weighs in on corporate taxes. he's senior editor-at-large at "fortune." >> the words "accounting" and "simple" rarely appear in the same sentence, but there's a chance to fix that, at least when it comes to figuring out how much federal income tax big companies pay. right now, no one but the company knows what it owes the i.r.s. for a given year. companies have to disclose tons otax number buthat's not one of them. this means the stories you've heard for months about, say, g.e. not paying any federal tax for 2010 are simply wrong. journalists and analysts have taken the tax number companies use to calculate reported profits, and confused it with what they owe the i.r.s. they're not the same. there's a simple accounting fix for this. the financial accounting standards board can require companies to disclose information from their federal tax returns. that way, we'll know what they actually pay. sure, we'll still argue whether that's enough, but at least we'll be using the right numbers, instead of the wrong ones. g