U.S. Firms With Irish Addresses Get Tax Breaks Derided as ‘Blarney’

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-04/u-s-firms-with-irish-addresses-criticized-for-the-moves.html

Randall Hogan chairs the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Sandy Cutler ran the Greater Cleveland Partnership. Tony Petrello donated $5 million to the Texas Children’s Hospital.

They’re all chief executive officers who have given back to their communities. They oversee thousands of American workers. And they run companies that have opted out of the U.S. tax system.

The technique these companies use to lower their tax bills -- shifting legal addresses to low-tax Switzerland, Ireland, and Bermuda -- was in the spotlight last week. Pfizer Inc., the largest U.S. drugmaker, said it’s seeking a British address, a move that might save more than $1 billion a year in U.S. taxes.

Pfizer is the biggest company yet to follow a growing trend. At least 15 publicly traded U.S. companies have taken steps to reincorporate abroad in the past two years. Most of their CEOs didn’t leave. Just the tax bills did.

[Historic NY]

1. TAXES are for the little people...

thye get away with this because there is little or no penalty involved.

[Jesus Malverde]

2. Lowering your tax bill is like lowering your labor and environmental bill

Part and parcel of globalization and FREE TRADE.

[treestar]

3. and malarkey too

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. The USA can't maintain the highest nominal rate of corporate tax in the developed world...

and expect that multinational corporations aren't going to relocate their headquarters elsewhere. There's no compelling reason for a multinational corporation which may transact most of its business outside the US to maintain a US headquarters even if it started as an American company. (For reference, 57% of Pfizer's revenues for 2013 came from outside the USA.)