Saturday, March 19, 2016

Corporate inversions

Washington Post: "Giving up its U.S. citizenship could save Pfizer $35 billion in taxes."
When Pfizer announced its plan last year to merge with Botox-maker Allergan and move its headquarters to Ireland the company said the deal would lower its tax rate to about 17 percent to 18 percent, saving it about $2 billion over three years.

But in a report published Thursday, Americans for Tax Fairness say the New York-based pharma giant will actually save much more by giving up its U.S. citizenship: $35 billion.
Is it any wonder that U.S.-based companies are seeing to flee the highest corporate tax rate in the world?  Now pay your "fair share" and give those kids a $15 minimum wage, too.

3 comments:

It's a Taxing Business said...

The irony is that no corporation pays taxes. Since their taxes are a cost of doing business, they are added into the prices they charge for their goods and services. The corporate income tax is paid by customers who buy things - including those activists who strenuously call for a high corporate tax rate.

In the end, the corporate income tax is just another way to tax ordinary people. The Democrats drum up hatred for the corporations so that they can lay the taxes on a populace which thinks that the corporations are being rightly "punished".

siacd999 said...

...and when the big companies flee, the vampires in government will turn to medium-sized companies and small businesses to make up the vanished tax revenue. They're already trying to do so.

Lois Slow Lerner said...

Corporate share of federal tax revenue has dropped by two-thirds in sixty years, from 32% in 1952 to 10% in 2013.

U.S. companies hold more than $2 trillion in offshore accounts; that's the amount that's known..

Two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies that have significant overseas profits pay more in foreign taxes than in U.S. taxes.

There's a wee difference between statutory tax rates and effective tax rates; the average corporate federal tax rate in America isn't 35%, it's 12.6%. Perhaps we should cut "the highest corporate tax rate in the world" by 13% so they can start receiving a check in April.