Americans for Tax Fairness Selected Opinion Pieces on Corporate Inversions
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AMERICANS FOR TAX FAIRNESS SELECTED OPINION PIECES ON CORPORATE INVERSIONS As of October 1, 2014 NATIONAL Fortune – Positively un-American Tax Dodgers, Allan Sloan, July 7, 2014 “Undermining the finances of the federal government by inverting helps undermine our economy. And that’s a bad thing, in the long run, for companies that do business in America.” Fortune – Foreign Tax Ploys Raise a Question: What is an American Company?, Allan Sloan, June 2, 2014 “But in the past few years, as the world has become more global and other countries have cut their corporate rates, a new exodus wave has started. ‘For the past 20 years, there’s been an arms race between the companies on the one hand and the IRS and Congress on the other, and the companies always seem to come up with better weapons,’ says tax expert Bob Willens.” The New York Times – Cracking Down on Corporate Tax Games, The Editorial Board, September 23, 2014 “New rules from the Treasury Department[2] are likely to slow the offensive practice that allows American companies to avoid taxes by merging with foreign rivals. Known as corporate inversions, these are complex, modern variations on the practices of yesteryear, when companies dodged their taxes by moving their addresses to post office boxes in the Caribbean.” The New York Times – At Walgreen, Renouncing Corporate Citizenship, Andrew Ross Sorkin, June 30, 2014 “In Walgreen’s case, an inversion would be an affront to United States taxpayers. The company, which also owns the Duane Reade chain in New York, reaps almost a quarter of its $72 billion in revenue directly from the government; it received $16.7 billion from Medicare and Medicaid last year.” “Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, called it ‘unfair and deeply unpatriotic if the company moves offshore while continuing to make its money here, leaving the rest of us to pick up the tab for its tax avoidance.’” The New York Times - Corporate Artful Dodgers, Paul Krugman, July 27, 2014 “The most important thing to understand about inversion is that it does not in any meaningful sense involve American business “moving overseas.” Consider the case of Walgreen, the giant drugstore chain that, according to multiple reports, is on the verge of making itself legally Swiss. If the plan goes through, nothing about the business will change; your local pharmacy won’t close and reopen in Zurich. It will be a purely paper transaction — but it will deprive the U.S. government of several billion dollars in revenue that you, the taxpayer, will have to make up one way or another.” The New York Times – Pfizer’s Ploy and the Porous Tax Laws, The Editorial Board, May 23, 2014 “Even if the bid fails — the deadline is May 26 — Pfizer’s action has drawn the attention of officials in Washington who, quite rightly, have vowed to tighten laws that, when exploited by companies like Pfizer, result in higher taxes for everyone else or reduced government services.” The New York Times – The Tax Dodge Goes On, The Editorial Board, August 5, 2014 “Inversions completed to date are expected to sap the Treasury of nearly $20 billion in taxes in the next decade. And that’s just the beginning. At a recent hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, the Democratic chairman, Ron Wyden, said that up to 25 companies, encouraged by big banks that earn lucrative fees on the deals, are currently considering relocating overseas to cut their tax bills.” The New York Times, The Inversion Delusion, Joe Nocera, September 8, 2014 “For starters, American multinationals, with their high-powered tax departments, rarely pay 35 percent or anything close to it. And those earnings that are supposed to get taxed upon repatriation? Needless to say, they never get repatriated; by some estimates, $2 trillion in earnings by American multinationals reside, untaxed, outside the country.” The New York Times, In Defense of Corporate Tax Dodging, September 26, 2014 “In a passive aggressive way, former President Bill Clinton recently criticized new rules from the Obama Treasury Department to curb blatant corporate tax dodging. The rules are aimed at slowing the rush of corporate inversions, whereby United States corporations acquire a foreign rival and, in the process, open up a whole bag of tricks to cut their taxes worldwide.” The New York Times, Jeers and Cheers Over Tax Inversions, Jeff Somer, September 13, 2014 “In the end, Walgreen decided that the outcry over tax inversions was too much to bear: Gregory D. Wasson, the Walgreen C.E.O., decided to go ahead with the Alliance Boots merger — but not with a tax relocation overseas. “We had to consider the consumer backlash,” Mr. Wasson said in a meeting with employees in August. ‘We had to consider the political backlash.’” The Washington Post – An Open Letter to Medtronic on What it Means to be an American company, Steven Pearlstein, June 20, 2014 “You want a well-educated workforce to design and make your products, based on basic research done through an extensive network of government-funded institutes and laboratories. You want modern ports and highways and airports to ship your products to market, and an efficient border operation to speed them through customs. You want an honest, efficient financial system that can provide you with cheap and plentiful capital. You demand a professional, credible regulatory agency that can expeditiously evaluate your products and ensure customers that they are safe and effective. And you insist on government-funded health care for the poor, the elderly and the disabled that will pay you more for your devices than any other country in the world.” The Washington Post, Another Reason Main Street Shouldn’t Trust Wall Street, Allan Sloan, September 11, 2014 “’Inversion,’ of course, is a euphemism for ‘desertion.’ It happens when a U.S. corporation takes over a foreign company and then — for tax purposes only — pretends to be based in the taken-over company’s country. That allows the U.S. company to pay lower income tax rates — such as 12.5 percent (or even less) in Ireland rather than 35 percent in the United States” The Christian Science Monitor – If Walgreens Goes Swiss and Pays Less Taxes, Then it Shouldn’t Influence US Politics, Robert Reich, July 7, 2014 “By treaty, the US government can’t (and shouldn’t) discriminate against foreign corporations offering as good if not better deals than American companies offer. So if Walgreen as a Swiss company continues to fill Medicaid and Medicare payments as well as, say, CVS, it’s likely that Walgreen will continue to earn almost a Page 2 of 6 quarter of its $72 billion annual revenues directly from the US government. But as a foreign corporation, Walgreen should no longer have any say over the size of those payments, what drugs they cover, or how they’re administered.” The Nation – On this Fourth of July, Meet Your Unpatriotic Corporations, Katrina vanden Heuvel, July 3, 2014 “Walgreens, The New York Times reported, is looking to relocate from Illinois to Switzerland, in the process merging with a Swiss corporation and reincorporating itself as a foreign entity. It is, bluntly, an old-fashioned tax dodge, aimed at trimming eleven percentage points off the company’s corporate tax rate. Americans for Tax Fairness estimates that the move will cost US taxpayers more than $4 billion over the next five years.” CALIFORNIA The Californian – Companies take US Benefits, but Flee US Taxes, The Editorial Board, July 17, 2014 “Technically, merging and reincorporating abroad to avoid taxes is called an inversion. Bluntly, it's called a disgrace. U.S. companies should push for tax reform rather than departing on paper and handing their tax burden to American taxpayers.” (reprinted from The Raleigh News & Observer) The Los Angeles Times - Close Loopholes that Let U.S. Firms Avoid Taxes by Using Inversions, Michael Hiltzik, August 2, 2014 “A recent report by the Congressional Research Service identified 47 inversions undertaken in just the last decade, involving firms in the pharmaceutical, financial services and manufacturing industries, among others. The report was released this week by Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., who has introduced a bill to clamp down on this tax-driven scam, which he says could cost the U.S. treasury $17 billion over the next decade.” The Los Angeles Times - Corporate Tax Scam Watch: The 'Inversion' Craze, Michael Hiltzik, July 7, 2014 “An inversion happens when a U.S. company merges with a smaller foreign firm and moves its official headquarters to the partner's home, typically a lower-tax jurisdiction. Management stays in the U.S., the workforce doesn't move and the company still sells as much as before to the U.S. market. But the tax treatment of some of its income changes. Walgreens, according to an estimate by the advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness, could save $4 billion over five years by merging with the drug retailer and wholesaler Alliance Boots and reincorporating in Switzerland.” The San Francisco Chronicle – Tax Dodge Should Cost Corporations their Political Rights, Robert Reich, July 18, 2014 “Even if it becomes a Swiss corporation, Walgreens will remain your Main Street druggist. It just won't pay nearly as much in U.S. taxes. Which means the rest of us will have to make up the difference. Walgreens' morph into a Swiss corporation will cost you and me and every other American taxpayer about $4 billion over five years, according to an analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness.” COLORADO The Reporter-Herald, The U.S. Needs Good Corporate Citizens Here, The Editorial Board, August 18, 2014 “But regardless of any changes Congress makes in the tax law, America needs companies that started here and that do business with Americans, to pay their fair share of American taxes.” Page 3 of 6 FLORIDA The Miami Herald – Dodging the Taxman, The Editorial Board, September 19, 2014 “The White House’s latest target for ‘executive authority’ is the scheme that allows American companies to establish a corporate headquarters in another country to reduce their debt to the U.S.