Throwing in an LOTR reference, must be time for second breakfast:
"Shire deal is year’s biggest in US; AbbVie can claim Irish address and lower tax rate" by Robert Weisman | Globe Staff July 18, 2014
Drug maker AbbVie Inc. will pay nearly $55 billion for Lexington biotech Shire PLC, joining two global companies with substantial operations in Massachusetts through the biggest US business deal of the year.
The amount of money they toss around is $taggering.
The agreement disclosed Friday was spurred by potential tax savings for Illinois-based AbbVie, which will be able to claim Shire’s Ireland address and pay corporate taxes at that country’s lower rate.
Related: $53b acquisition of Shire to be announced Friday
Kept upping the ante.
The deal will create a biopharmaceutical goliath with nine research centers and 14 manufacturing plants worldwide and a combined market value of $137 billion. Together, they generate about $25 billion annually in sales of drugs that treat common conditions such as arthritis, as well as medicines to treat rare genetic disorders such as enzyme deficiencies, a key business for Shire.
“This legitimizes Big Pharma’s interest in the rare disease business,” said Brian Corvino, head of the commercial consulting practice at Decision Resources Group in Yardley, Pa. He said drugs for rare diseases often are sold to smaller patient populations for hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient each year.
It legitimi$es their intere$t in the rare di$ea$e bu$ine$$, huh?
*******************
Shire, which rejected at least three prior takeover offers from AbbVie, may be best known for Adderall XR and other medications to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
OMG! Some of my friends are stealing that from their adolescent kids because it's a super buzz, or so I am told (at this point blog editor frowns; feels like he has missed all the fun all these years, and now he is too old to partake and besides, pre$cription pharmaceuticals scare the crap out of me).
Its biggest research labs and about 1,500 employees, including the company’s chief executive, are in Lexington, where it also makes enzyme replacement drugs to treat Gaucher and Fabry diseases, both rare genetic disorders. But its headquarters is in Dublin, where the corporate tax rate is 12.5 percent, compared with 35 percent in the United States.
I could get you a glass of water but you will have to link it down your own throat, if you can read my writing.
AbbVie plans to structure the Shire takeover as an “inversion,” allowing the company to switch its own corporate base to the United Kingdom and cut its US tax obligations. The move is expected to drop AbbVie’s effective tax rate to about 13 percent by 2016, the company said.
A recent spinoff from Abbott Laboratories, AbbVie has 700 employees and a biologics manufacturing plant in Worcester, where it partly developed the arthritis drug Humira. But analysts said Humira could soon face competition from lower-cost generics.
“AbbVie’s dependency on Humira, combined with the decline of its rapidly maturing US drug business, is cause for concern,” said Joshua Owide, director of health care industry dynamics for London consulting firm GlobalData. “With this acquisition, AbbVie has taken a big step towards diversifying its portfolio.”
That is when I felt really $ick.
--more--"
Also see: Just 16, Karina Moreira battles cancer in her own style
The guest of honor still has hope.
Cancer is horrible, and I don't wish it on anyone. Not even this guy:
"Obama pushes to stop corporate overseas tax moves" by Tom Murphy | Associated Press July 17, 2014
NEW YORK — The Obama administration is urging Congress to act swiftly to curtail a growing trend in which US corporations reorganize overseas with foreign entities in part to trim their tax bills back home.
Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew told House and Senate leaders in a letter that such deals, known as inversions, ‘‘hollow out the US corporate income tax base’’ and Congress should immediately enact legislation retroactive to May that stops the practice.
Hor$e out the barn, Lew.
‘‘We should not be providing support for corporations that seek to shift their profits overseas to avoid paying their fair share of taxes,’’ Lew said in the letter dated Tuesday.
A total of 47 US-based companies have combined with foreign businesses over the past decade in inversions, according to the Congressional Research Service. Several more are planning or considering the move, including Walgreen Co., which runs the nation’s largest drugstore chain. Last month, Medtronic Inc. announced plans to buy Covidien plc, which has its US headquarters in Mansfield, Mass., but its global base is in Ireland.
Inversions enable US-based, multinational companies to lower their tax bills in part by combining with a foreign company and reorganizing in a country with a lower tax rate. At 35 percent, the United States has the highest corporate income tax rate in the industrialized world, and it also taxes income earned overseas and then brought home.
*****************
Lew said the best way to address inversions is through reform that ‘‘lowers the corporate tax rate, broadens the tax base, closes loopholes, and simplifies the tax system.’’
I gotta nickel.
‘‘But, even as we work to do that, we should prevent companies from effectively renouncing their citizenship to get out of paying taxes,’’ he wrote.
Then the RIGHTS of INDIVIDUALS that has been CONFERRED UPON THEM by the COURTS should NO LONGER APPLY!
Senator Orrin Hatch said Lew is correct in that Congress has to lower the ‘‘burdensomely high corporate tax rate.”
‘‘However, it is misguided to think a short-sighted patch aimed only at alleviating a symptom of the broader problem will prevent companies from leaving the country,’’ the Utah Republican said in an e-mailed statement. ‘‘What’s more, this short-sighted patch could ratchet up the tax baggage US companies carry and make them more attractive for foreign takeovers.
‘‘Congress should be focusing on reforms that make it more attractive for companies to stay within the US, not those that make it more difficult to leave.’’
Democrats in both the House and Senate have introduced bills to rein in inversions. In addition, Obama’s 2015 budget contained a proposal to curtail the move.
‘‘Short of undertaking comprehensive business tax reform, there are concrete steps that Congress can and should take right now,’’ White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday. ‘‘You can expect that this is a topic you will continue to hear about more from the president in the weeks ahead.’’
The election-year push to make corporate tax changes is unlikely to succeed in the divided Congress. But closing corporate loopholes has been a key feature of Obama’s economic message.
--more--"
FLASHBACK:
"Since ’12 election, drive to end tax loophole fizzled out; No serious attempt to halt benefit for investors despite campaign rhetoric" by Noah Bierman | Globe Staff, December 01, 2013
WASHINGTON — Democrats eagerly stoked outrage during the 2012 presidential election over millionaire Republican Mitt Romney’s low effective tax rate of 14 percent. Did Romney, they suggested, benefit from a special tax loophole for hedge fund and private equity investors, so “fat cats’’ like him can pay taxes at a much lower rate than many regular Americans?
The issue was simple in its appeal to populist anger.
But a year later, the heated rhetoric of campaign season has fizzled.
As predicted on these very pages as it was happening.
Concerted initiatives from the White House and Democrats in Congress to close the loophole have not materialized. The “carried interest” loophole — which allows some fund managers to pay taxes at the rate for investments, now 20 percent, instead of the top income tax rate, now 39.6 percent — lives on.
It’s the tax break that won’t die.
The contrast between Democrats’ demands for action during the campaign and the merely desultory efforts in the year since reveals how the Democratic Party’s commitment to the issue is more complicated than its campaign slogans of 2012.
$ay what?
Yes, Republicans are dug in so deeply against any change that might raise taxes — in this case, the removal of a tax cut benefit — that odds of passage are small.
I'm a Republican. I don't care what it is, this government already takes in way too much money and spends it in the wrong places.
But specialists on the issue say they also detect Democratic ambivalence: crusading against the “carried interest’’ loophole at this stage would inflame an important source of campaign contributions for Democrats.
$ay what?
Since 2000, private equity, hedge fund, and venture capital managers have spent a combined $352 million on federal elections, fairly evenly split between the parties, 53 percent for Republicans and 47 percent for Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
It is called PLAYING BOTH $IDES and it en$ures why there is NO CHANGE to the $TATU$ QUO!
Related: Sunday Globe Specials: Fiscal Cliff Fraud
Oh, look, $omething el$e they can agree on!
So the TAX INCREASE on the WEALTHY was actually a TAX CUT?
Even with a special committee considering a budget pact in December that could include tax code changes, few are speaking up strongly on the subject.
“The issue has been an effective fund-raising tool for both parties,” said Victor Fleischer, a University of California San Diego law professor who is a leading authority on the issue. “The Republicans, because their base doesn’t like tax increases, and the Democrats because private equity firms believe some legislators can be persuaded.”
Democrats, Fleischer said, “consistently said some of the right things” on the issue but have not put much effort into promoting tax overhaul.
Because they are being BOUGHT OFF and PER$UADED!
Massachusetts, despite its liberal politics, is one of several epicenters for the financial sector executives who benefit most from the break. Though the state’s Democratic politicians have railed against the tax break, they have a mixed record on follow-through....
Both of the state’s new senators, Edward J. Markey and Elizabeth Warren pledged during their campaigns to end the break for wealthy fund managers. But neither has so far made it a priority in office. They blame Republican obstruction for thwarting efforts to close the loophole.
*****************************
“Change occurs over time,” said Warren, who says she is adamant that carried interest should be part of any budget or tax code negotiations with Republicans. “There have to be enough people to stand up and speak loudly enough.”
I've run out of patience waiting for change. I've been speaking up loudly for a decade now and nothing. I know she is a well-meaning women, but she is caught in the $y$tem as well. The $ad and $imple fact is the $y$tem is broken beyond repair. The best thing that could be done is dissolve it and start over. Wa$hington can not fix it self, and corporate governance has failed for all those but the very $elect few.
Still, their elections marked a departure from their predecessors. In the Senate, Scott Brown, a Republican, opposed any change in the tax rate, while John F. Kerry, a Democrat, showed ambivalence, warning about “unintended consequences’’ of the change and at times echoing the industry’s argument that eliminating the tax break posed a risk to the economy, even while voting for the change at least twice.
Not really a $urprise coming from him, is it?
The tax break may be the best example in Washington of why it’s so difficult to take on a special interest.
No me$$y parti$an$hip problem, huh?
The Private Equity Growth Capital Council, a chief lobby for the industry, has pushed hard to link the tax break to bedrock American principles of rewarding risk-takers. Its website has a video depicting a pair of fictional sisters who open a restaurant, noting that the tax structure for billion-dollar private equity firms is no different than it is for small businesses.
The industry group insists that the exemption isn’t a loophole. It asserts that eliminating the exemption would curb investment, including real estate.
Tax specialists say the industry has done an especially good job at capitalizing on the confusing aspects of tax law to sow seeds of doubt about the benefit, which allows much of their income to be taxed at the lower, capital gains rate rather than the higher income tax rate.
Meaning they are deceiving you for their own $elf-$erving benefit. Such good guys running the AmeriKan economic $y$tem these days.
“There really is no argument for carried interest to receive capital gains treatment,” said Edward D. Kleinbard, a former chief of staff at the Joint Committee on Taxation and now a law professor at the University of Southern California. “They’re just designed to confuse and bamboozle.”
Oh, so they serve the same function as an AmeriKan new$paper?
Though many big businesses tend to favor Republicans in their giving, private equity, hedge funds, and venture capital executives have given generously to both parties. Two of Massachusetts’ top 20 Democratic donors in the most recent election, for example, Jonathan Lavine and Joshua Bekenstein, are top managers at Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Romney.
Do I need to type it?
The state’s fifth and eighth biggest Democratic donors, brothers Douglas and George Krupp, cofounded a real estate investment and private equity company. Number six on the list, Walter Gilbert, is a venture capitalist.
And where does venture capital come from? Pension funds and college endowments.
Now you know why, among other reasons, college tuition is skyrocketing and why workers are being asked to give back even more of their flat pensions -- so money junkies can have more, more, more, to ply into politics!!
The industries have been especially helpful to Majority PAC, a “super committee’’ operated by allies and former staffers of Senate Democrats including majority leader Harry Reid that can accept unlimited contributions. James H. Simons, founder of the Renaissance Technologies hedge fund, gave Senate Majority PAC $3 million ahead of the last election. Vincent Ryan, founder of Boston-based Schooner Capital, donated $350,000. Multiple donors contacted for this story declined to comment or did not respond to requests.
Sure is plenty of money out there for such a shit economy.
“The venture community has over the past few decades become an important fund-raising constituency for the Democratic Party and they’ve earned their seat at the table,” said Larry Rasky, a Democratic bundler who runs the public relations firm Rasky Baerlein.
Have you had enough imagery and illu$ion yet?
Though Democrats have campaigned on changing the tax rate, many have quietly found ways to weaken those changes.
$ay f***ing what?
Even Obama, who campaigned against the tax break to draw attention to Romney’s low tax burden, has narrowed his proposal this year to inflict less pain on the industry. Obama’s initial plan would have garnered $24 billion in new taxes over the next decade. The latest version, which excludes more investors, raises $16 billion.
“It’s a good one to demagogue for the Democrats,” said Robert McIntyre, director of the Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal advocacy group. “It’s also a dangerous one for them to do because there’s so much money out there. Even if it’s not going to them, they don’t want it to flood to the other side.”
Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, is often cited for his role in protecting the financial industry. In 2007, he was pivotal in slowing momentum for a bill that passed the House by insisting it apply to more industries, a move both sides saw as a poison pill.
“He broadened it to death,” said former US representative Barney Frank, who backed several bills that passed the House.
Though Schumer consistently ranks among the industry’s top donation recipients, Frank said he believes Schumer was motivated by the impact on his state, the world’s financial capital. Schumer has since voted to close the loophole.
He didn't vote for it when it really matter, that slimy piece of shit!
Kerry’s role in protecting the financial industry’s interests is less well-known. His 2004 presidential run coincided with the industry’s initial forays into political activism, and he continued to tap the them when he returned to the Senate. Kerry, like Schumer, has voted to close the loophole at least twice.
But advocates like McIntyre say Kerry did more to tamp down prospects for closing the loophole behind the scenes, using his post on the Senate Finance Committee to breed skepticism. At a series of 2007 hearings, for example, he grilled industry foes and invoked some of the arguments put forth by the industry’s lobbyist, including the notion that any change in the tax structure held risk for the economy.
Wow, did Kohn Kerry ever sell out to money!
“The thing we have to think about carefully in the committee are the downstream impacts of how you begin to treat this,” Kerry said then. “If you single out one piece and say we are going to get our chunk here on some theory, that theory may well have a lot of impact on how other deals are made and how other capital is treated.”
But he is all for carbon taxes on YOU!
Charles Kingson, who testified in favor of imposing higher taxes on the industries, said he was not prepared for Kerry’s and Schumer’s questions, which he considered hostile.
“I was very surprised,” Kingson said. “These guys are liberal Democrats.”
Thus it does not $urpri$e me at all!
--more--"
Related: Majority of Congress members now millionaires
"Since ’12 election, drive to end tax loophole fizzled out; No serious attempt to halt benefit for investors despite campaign rhetoric" by Noah Bierman | Globe Staff, December 01, 2013
WASHINGTON — Democrats eagerly stoked outrage during the 2012 presidential election over millionaire Republican Mitt Romney’s low effective tax rate of 14 percent. Did Romney, they suggested, benefit from a special tax loophole for hedge fund and private equity investors, so “fat cats’’ like him can pay taxes at a much lower rate than many regular Americans?
The issue was simple in its appeal to populist anger.
But a year later, the heated rhetoric of campaign season has fizzled.
As predicted on these very pages as it was happening.
Concerted initiatives from the White House and Democrats in Congress to close the loophole have not materialized. The “carried interest” loophole — which allows some fund managers to pay taxes at the rate for investments, now 20 percent, instead of the top income tax rate, now 39.6 percent — lives on.
It’s the tax break that won’t die.
The contrast between Democrats’ demands for action during the campaign and the merely desultory efforts in the year since reveals how the Democratic Party’s commitment to the issue is more complicated than its campaign slogans of 2012.
$ay what?
Yes, Republicans are dug in so deeply against any change that might raise taxes — in this case, the removal of a tax cut benefit — that odds of passage are small.
I'm a Republican. I don't care what it is, this government already takes in way too much money and spends it in the wrong places.
But specialists on the issue say they also detect Democratic ambivalence: crusading against the “carried interest’’ loophole at this stage would inflame an important source of campaign contributions for Democrats.
$ay what?
Since 2000, private equity, hedge fund, and venture capital managers have spent a combined $352 million on federal elections, fairly evenly split between the parties, 53 percent for Republicans and 47 percent for Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
It is called PLAYING BOTH $IDES and it en$ures why there is NO CHANGE to the $TATU$ QUO!
Related: Sunday Globe Specials: Fiscal Cliff Fraud
Oh, look, $omething el$e they can agree on!
So the TAX INCREASE on the WEALTHY was actually a TAX CUT?
Even with a special committee considering a budget pact in December that could include tax code changes, few are speaking up strongly on the subject.
“The issue has been an effective fund-raising tool for both parties,” said Victor Fleischer, a University of California San Diego law professor who is a leading authority on the issue. “The Republicans, because their base doesn’t like tax increases, and the Democrats because private equity firms believe some legislators can be persuaded.”
Democrats, Fleischer said, “consistently said some of the right things” on the issue but have not put much effort into promoting tax overhaul.
Because they are being BOUGHT OFF and PER$UADED!
Massachusetts, despite its liberal politics, is one of several epicenters for the financial sector executives who benefit most from the break. Though the state’s Democratic politicians have railed against the tax break, they have a mixed record on follow-through....
Both of the state’s new senators, Edward J. Markey and Elizabeth Warren pledged during their campaigns to end the break for wealthy fund managers. But neither has so far made it a priority in office. They blame Republican obstruction for thwarting efforts to close the loophole.
*****************************
“Change occurs over time,” said Warren, who says she is adamant that carried interest should be part of any budget or tax code negotiations with Republicans. “There have to be enough people to stand up and speak loudly enough.”
I've run out of patience waiting for change. I've been speaking up loudly for a decade now and nothing. I know she is a well-meaning women, but she is caught in the $y$tem as well. The $ad and $imple fact is the $y$tem is broken beyond repair. The best thing that could be done is dissolve it and start over. Wa$hington can not fix it self, and corporate governance has failed for all those but the very $elect few.
Still, their elections marked a departure from their predecessors. In the Senate, Scott Brown, a Republican, opposed any change in the tax rate, while John F. Kerry, a Democrat, showed ambivalence, warning about “unintended consequences’’ of the change and at times echoing the industry’s argument that eliminating the tax break posed a risk to the economy, even while voting for the change at least twice.
Not really a $urprise coming from him, is it?
The tax break may be the best example in Washington of why it’s so difficult to take on a special interest.
No me$$y parti$an$hip problem, huh?
The Private Equity Growth Capital Council, a chief lobby for the industry, has pushed hard to link the tax break to bedrock American principles of rewarding risk-takers. Its website has a video depicting a pair of fictional sisters who open a restaurant, noting that the tax structure for billion-dollar private equity firms is no different than it is for small businesses.
The industry group insists that the exemption isn’t a loophole. It asserts that eliminating the exemption would curb investment, including real estate.
Tax specialists say the industry has done an especially good job at capitalizing on the confusing aspects of tax law to sow seeds of doubt about the benefit, which allows much of their income to be taxed at the lower, capital gains rate rather than the higher income tax rate.
Meaning they are deceiving you for their own $elf-$erving benefit. Such good guys running the AmeriKan economic $y$tem these days.
“There really is no argument for carried interest to receive capital gains treatment,” said Edward D. Kleinbard, a former chief of staff at the Joint Committee on Taxation and now a law professor at the University of Southern California. “They’re just designed to confuse and bamboozle.”
Oh, so they serve the same function as an AmeriKan new$paper?
Though many big businesses tend to favor Republicans in their giving, private equity, hedge funds, and venture capital executives have given generously to both parties. Two of Massachusetts’ top 20 Democratic donors in the most recent election, for example, Jonathan Lavine and Joshua Bekenstein, are top managers at Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Romney.
Do I need to type it?
The state’s fifth and eighth biggest Democratic donors, brothers Douglas and George Krupp, cofounded a real estate investment and private equity company. Number six on the list, Walter Gilbert, is a venture capitalist.
And where does venture capital come from? Pension funds and college endowments.
Now you know why, among other reasons, college tuition is skyrocketing and why workers are being asked to give back even more of their flat pensions -- so money junkies can have more, more, more, to ply into politics!!
The industries have been especially helpful to Majority PAC, a “super committee’’ operated by allies and former staffers of Senate Democrats including majority leader Harry Reid that can accept unlimited contributions. James H. Simons, founder of the Renaissance Technologies hedge fund, gave Senate Majority PAC $3 million ahead of the last election. Vincent Ryan, founder of Boston-based Schooner Capital, donated $350,000. Multiple donors contacted for this story declined to comment or did not respond to requests.
Sure is plenty of money out there for such a shit economy.
“The venture community has over the past few decades become an important fund-raising constituency for the Democratic Party and they’ve earned their seat at the table,” said Larry Rasky, a Democratic bundler who runs the public relations firm Rasky Baerlein.
Have you had enough imagery and illu$ion yet?
Though Democrats have campaigned on changing the tax rate, many have quietly found ways to weaken those changes.
$ay f***ing what?
Even Obama, who campaigned against the tax break to draw attention to Romney’s low tax burden, has narrowed his proposal this year to inflict less pain on the industry. Obama’s initial plan would have garnered $24 billion in new taxes over the next decade. The latest version, which excludes more investors, raises $16 billion.
“It’s a good one to demagogue for the Democrats,” said Robert McIntyre, director of the Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal advocacy group. “It’s also a dangerous one for them to do because there’s so much money out there. Even if it’s not going to them, they don’t want it to flood to the other side.”
Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, is often cited for his role in protecting the financial industry. In 2007, he was pivotal in slowing momentum for a bill that passed the House by insisting it apply to more industries, a move both sides saw as a poison pill.
“He broadened it to death,” said former US representative Barney Frank, who backed several bills that passed the House.
Though Schumer consistently ranks among the industry’s top donation recipients, Frank said he believes Schumer was motivated by the impact on his state, the world’s financial capital. Schumer has since voted to close the loophole.
He didn't vote for it when it really matter, that slimy piece of shit!
Kerry’s role in protecting the financial industry’s interests is less well-known. His 2004 presidential run coincided with the industry’s initial forays into political activism, and he continued to tap the them when he returned to the Senate. Kerry, like Schumer, has voted to close the loophole at least twice.
But advocates like McIntyre say Kerry did more to tamp down prospects for closing the loophole behind the scenes, using his post on the Senate Finance Committee to breed skepticism. At a series of 2007 hearings, for example, he grilled industry foes and invoked some of the arguments put forth by the industry’s lobbyist, including the notion that any change in the tax structure held risk for the economy.
Wow, did Kohn Kerry ever sell out to money!
“The thing we have to think about carefully in the committee are the downstream impacts of how you begin to treat this,” Kerry said then. “If you single out one piece and say we are going to get our chunk here on some theory, that theory may well have a lot of impact on how other deals are made and how other capital is treated.”
But he is all for carbon taxes on YOU!
Charles Kingson, who testified in favor of imposing higher taxes on the industries, said he was not prepared for Kerry’s and Schumer’s questions, which he considered hostile.
“I was very surprised,” Kingson said. “These guys are liberal Democrats.”
Thus it does not $urpri$e me at all!
--more--"
Related: Majority of Congress members now millionaires
That may have something to do with this:
"A strong stock market and better business climate have continued to concentrate American wealth in the top 1 percent of earners."
Tired of the $HIT $HOW POLITICAL FOOLEYS yet?
FLASHBACK to the PRESENT:
"More US firms chase mergers that yield overseas address" by Robert Weisman, Tracy Jan and Jack Newsham | Globe Staff | Globe Correspondent July 13, 2014
“It’s becoming increasingly disadvantageous to be a US-based multinational,” said Eric Toder, codirector of the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C., think tank. “So what’s the solution? You stop being a US-based multinational.”
Yeah, I know revenues are down all across the board, but they are still making record profits quarter after quarter.
There is nothing more di$ta$teful than the RICH CRYING POVERTY!
And that’s what many American corporations are doing.
*************
At a time when merger activity is rising, tax professionals are reporting a “renewed interest” in so-called tax inversions, under which US companies shift their corporate bases to Ireland or some other tax haven, said Daniel Berman, a principal at the Boston offices of accounting firm McGladney LLP and a former US Treasury official.
But there is also a backlash building in Congress and among some business leaders against businesses shopping for tax-light locales.
Two members of the Massachusetts delegation, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Richard Neal, have signed onto Democrat-sponsored bills in the Senate and the House that would tighten rules for companies that reincorporate overseas to avoid paying US taxes.
“This is one more example of Washington working for those who can afford to have armies of lobbyists and lawyers,” Warren said. “Big corporations are using the tax inversion loophole to juice their profits and avoid paying billions of dollars, while working families are forced to foot the bill.”
The bills on Capitol Hill call for a two-year moratorium on tax inversions....
Why not eliminate them entirely?
Meanwhile, at a Harvard Business School gathering last month that included chief executives from about three dozen top US companies, former Medtronic chief executive Bill George, now a Harvard management professor, called on businesses to rethink tax inversions....
Ireland maintains a corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent compared with the United States’s 35 percent, one of the highest rates in the world. Because of that, US companies hold about $3.5 trillion in corporate cash in offshore accounts, according to George. The money comes from sales of their products in foreign countries.
It is up to that, huh?
Related: Corporations Sitting on $1.8 Trillion in Cold Hard Cash
It was up to 1.95 trillion, so the second quarter must have been huge for them!
To use that cash in the United States for building plants, buying equipment, or hiring workers, companies would have to pay the 35 percent rate as a “repatriation” tax. The former Medtronic chief has called for a one-time holiday on repatriating money held abroad, but he admits it would be a temporary solution.
Those have a way of becoming permanent.
“Our tax rates are out of line with the rest of the world, so companies are leaving,” George said. “It’s tragic.”
I'm not arguing for increased taxes. This corrupt government already gets enough money; however, this i$$ue of corporate tax-dodging while making record amounts is totally separate.
What do you mean they DIDN'T PAY TAXES but GOT a REFUND?!!!!
Many believe a long-time solution must revolve around reforming US corporate tax policy.
And ONCE AGAIN we are seeing an AGENDA PUSH TAKE PLACE!!
Let's CUT CORPORATE TAXES in this TIME of RECORD PROFITS and LASH the TAXPAYERS with SOCIAL SERVICE CUTS!
Talk about FA$CI$TS!!!
“The problem is caused by US taxes being higher than everybody else’s,” said Joseph B. Darby III, a partner at Boston law firm Sullivan & Worcester. If you’re a US company, you’re a “tax prisoner,” he said.
It's a race to the bottom!
Tell you what, how about no taxation on corporatization, to twist a phrase from the founding fathers.
As for the Democratic bills in Congress, few think they stand much of a chance. “I don’t think people are paying much attention to legislative proposals,” Berman said. “Congress is not in much of a position to enact tax law these days.”
ONLY CUTS and BREAKS for companies!
The increases are to be health care premiums and carbon taxes on the us.
--more--"
Did you see your new champion and warrior in battle?
"Mylan to reap tax benefit with Abbott purchase" by Michelle Fay Cortez | Bloomberg News July 15, 2014
MINNEAPOLIS — Mylan Inc. said Monday it is buying Abbott Laboratories’ generic-drug business and forming a new company that will be incorporated in the Netherlands, allowing for a lower-cost tax base....
More than 15 US companies since 2010 have sought or completed purchases of companies overseas and changed their addresses to gain lower tax rates, a move known as inversion. The Mylan deal is among the first of the so-called spinversions, when a portion of a company is joined with another in a transaction that allows both to relocate.
‘‘This transaction, in our view, is a win for both companies,’’ said Michael Weinstein, an analyst at JPMorgan Chase in New York, in a note to clients Monday.
*****************
Last month, medical device maker Medtronic Inc. said it had agreed to buy Ireland-based competitor Covidien for $42.9 billion in cash and stock. The combined company would have executive offices in Ireland, which has a 12.5 percent corporate income tax rate.
And drugstore chain Walgreen Co. — which bills itself as ‘‘America’s premier pharmacy’’ — also is considering a similar move with Swiss health and beauty retailer Alliance Boots.
These tax-lowering overseas deals have raised concerns among some US lawmakers over the potential for lost tax revenue. But business experts say US companies that find the right deal have to consider inversions due to the heavy tax burden they face back home.
At 35 percent, the United States has the highest corporate income tax rate in the industrialized world.
By contrast, the European Union has an average tax rate of 21 percent, said Donald Goldman, a professor at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business.
In addition to the higher rate, the United States also taxes the income companies earn overseas once they bring it back home. The tax is the difference between the rate the company paid where it earned the income and the US rate.
‘‘We tax income wherever it is earned around the world once you bring it back home, and almost nobody else does that,’’ Goldman said....
--more--"
And when I finally get back to the rolling green hills of the Boston Globe shire I see it has been burned by the armies of Mordor with corpses everywhere?
