The Treasury Department Disrupts Pfizer-Allergan Inversion!
The U.S. Treasury Department is cracking down on corporate inversions. In response to the proposed merger between pharmaceutical giants Allergan and Pfizer, the Treasury Department proposed new rules that would 'wipe out' the massive tax benefits of the largest corporate inversion in our nation's history.
If those two companies had been allowed to merge, Pfizer would have been able to claim the lower corporate tax rate from Ireland, where Allergan is headquartered. That would have allowed Pfizer to skip out on paying their taxes on at least $40 billion dollars of profit that company earned while headquartered in the United States, then stashed away in overseas tax havens.
By using a series of so-called “hopscotch” loans, the new merged company could shift that profit to their new lower-tax home nation, and screw the American people out of a mountain of tax revenue. And, since the Republican-controlled Congress refuses to pass legislation to prevent these tax-dodging corporations from using dirty tricks, the Treasury Department put forward new tax regulations that the Wall Street Journal said, “make it harder for companies to make the arithmetic on inversions add up.”
Frank Clemente of the group Americans for Tax Fairness said, “If our analysis is correct, this is a major victory for taxpayers who pay their fair share and who should expect no less from one of America's biggest and most profitable corporations.”
To most of us, it's simply common sense. American corporations that make massive profits off of American consumers should pay their American taxes.
Hunter Blair of the Economic Policy Institute said, “Sadly, rather than pass more targeted fixes to corporate inversions, a Republican-led Congress has decided to sit on its hands as multinational corporations avoid more and more taxes...”
Until we can elect lawmakers who will act, the Treasury Department should continue to do what they can to stand up to these corporate tax dodgers.
Comments
What do I think? I think the Corporate States of America has destroyed this country and its workers are nothing more than road kill on their way to more and more profits kept in place by a corrupt campaign finance system. Both political parties should burn to the ground! I for one hope the revolution is just around the corner and if it means violence in every city and town so be it.
Do sharks eat meat?
Will corporations not use every legal means to reduce their taxes?
Rather than berate corporate behavior, focus on the scumbag senators who make the rules that corporations operate under.
ct
here is what i think and what i also know. U.S. citizens pay more for medicines than anyone else in the world and Big Pharma companies have rigged the system that Medicare is not even allowed to bargain for lower prices. I know that we would be stupid to start a race to the bottom by lowering taxes simply because the rate is lower in Ireland. Ireland is a total financial basket case. They do it to lure businesses there and if we were to lower our tax rate to compete, they would simply lower theirs more. I know that this move by Obama to stop Pfizer was a supurb move for the American tax payer. A move the Republcan congress refused to take as they are bought and paid for by their corporate/Wall St owners. Wall Street does not give a damn about anything but profit goals being achieved by the corps listed there. Pfizer makes it's big money from U.S. citizens and should pay taxes here, not in some foreign land where they only keep a post office box to avoid taxes.
Kudos to those at the the Treasury Dept. Those that gain from the United States economic system should pay into the tax system accordingly. That goes for blue collar and white collar workers, Business owners, and corporations.
Those in Washington now are too afraid of upsetting their campaign donors to close tax loopholes with legislation That's why congress needs an oil change, drain out the old corrupted politicians and pour in some fresh new representatives of we, the people. Then, if our fresh new representatives make the necessary changes before they too become corrupt, our tax laws will make sure everyone including corporations pay their fair share of taxes and our campaign finance system will not allow the buying of politicians. This may sound like a dream but it's not an impossible dream. Republicans and Democrats alike are beginning to understand that our elected representatives in Washington seem to be representing someone other than those of us that elected them. That's why we have Trump and Bernie doing so well in the Presidential primaries. They both march to the beat of a different drummer. The people as a whole want change. Until we get money out of politics, set term limits, and stop voter disenfranchisement, things like the tax code will not change for long. Most of our politicians did not start out as corrupt individuals, the system encouraged them to become so over a period of time.
Jussmartenuf. You are so right. In Canada I payed $24.00 before my insurance plan I pay 10% for eye drops. I was in Pheonix, AZ and the exact same drops where $114. 00 before my plan. Both where at Safeway. Both where the exact same manufacture. That's pretty bad
The NYT has an article suggesting that corporate tax dodging is a good thing in the Friday article : Free Pfizer--Why Inversions are Good for Us. (Here is the link) http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/opinion/free-pfizer-why-inversions-are-good-for-the-us.html?emc=edit_ty_20160408&nl=opinion&nlid=70208152&_r=0
It's about time this was adressed, and I'm guessing it would not have been, if not for Bernie Sanders having pressed the issue.
Thom, I believe you're entirely mistaken about the vast gulf of vitally important differences between Bernie Sanders, our Democratic candidate for the presidency, and
Hillary Clinton: Republican For President (Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzahvR0xbQ4
With regard to then-Senator Clinton's Iraq War vote...
saying "but, she walked that back" (if I'm quoting correctly) simply does not wash.
The rather large mistake being made by everyone writing here is that the choice is not between Sanders and Clinton, but rather between Clinton and one of four or five Republicans. The Republican nomination is far from settled and the Democratic nominee could wind up facing someone like Paul Ryan or even Marco Rubio. If that happens it's going to take more than unity to put a Democrat in the White House. It will take a candidate closer to the moderate wing of the Republican Party than Bernie Sanders is or ever could be. For good or bad, like it or not, that candidate is Hillary. I don't particularly like her, and like more than half the people polled, don't find her especially trustworthy, and I wish someone else had stepped up to the plate, but nobody did.
Perhaps if Bernie had started his campaign when she started hers, perhaps if Liz Warren had said yes when people asked her to run, if only... Well, now it is what it is, and if this party is to have any hope of surviving the religious authoritarian onslaught coming from the right, it should give up any hope of electing a self-proclaimed Socialist. If you think Bernie had a tough time with a newspaper's editorial board, try to imagine him onstage, attempting to defend spending money when there's an $18 Trillion deficit against Ted Cruz (one of the best think-on-his-feet debaters I've ever seen.) It's gonna' be brutal.
So before we villify Secretary Clinton (easy enough to do) let's consider the alternatives. If a Republican appoints three justices to The Court, it'll take a generation to repair it, if in fact it can be repaired. For every one of you who thinks Hillary is conservative, there's at least one person on the right who thinks John Kasich is a liberal.
The last gallup poll I looked at indicated that only 26% were opposed to hiking tax on corporations by getting rid of tax loopholes. Over 70% were in outright favor of increasing the corportrate tax rates in this manner.
This poll makes it important to note which political party, Thom already pointed them out....a Teapublic Party lead congress sitting on their hands, is responsible for not acting on corporate tax evasion.
So if we had a fair and balanced corp. media, the scoop would go like this: Because of willful inaction by congressional Republican public servants, the U.S. Treasury Department has stepped in to block the corporate tax evasion being attempted by Pfizer via a merger tactic known as inversion. Polls indicate that a vast majority, over 70% of the population favors this action by our Treasury Department.
In a related story, an unsolved mystery continues...... Why almost half of the voting population continues to vote against what they indicate they desire in polls......this by voting Teapublican?????? Our network will air a one hour special on this bizarre self injurious behavior Monday night, right after your nightly news.
CORPORATIONS ARE TAX COLLECTORS, NOT TAXPAYERS, I repeat, CORPORATIONS ARE TAX COLLECTORS, NOT TAXPAYERS, again, CORPORATIONS ARE TAX COLLECTORS, NOT TAXPAYERS, one more time, CORPORATIONS ARE TAX COLLECTORS, NOT TAXPAYERS. It puzzles me greatly that the public still can't understand where corporations get the money to pay taxes from. So we force corps to pay their "FAIR SHARE", get real, the public, read "customer", now gets to pay their "FAIR SHARE" and the corporate "FAIR SHARE", what the hell is "FAIR" about that. Eliminate corporate/business taxes on profits and watch all those companies come back to roost in America. Develop incentives to limit executive greed and pass the savings back to the consumer. Convict those who remove money from our economy unlawfully of treason and lock them up. Repatriate as much as possible the offshore transfer of funds solely for tax evasion and distribute them to the public in the form of tax credits. And get over this "FAIR SHARE" crap, there is no fair share when applied to taxation.
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
Hello All
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Hi Thom. What do I think? I think they've already rigged this capitalist system to get almost all the economic gains workers produce for them and Corporate Inversion is what they've been doing with what I call "Labor Inversion" which is where they use so-called Trade deals to pay less for labor by moving production "offshore".
They are done with us. They'v squeezed us for all we got and now heading to other shores while our cities will start to look like Detroit complete with packs of wild dogs as we Uber around the 10% Yuppie Class from Yoga to their book clubs before heading to our job at Starbucks at minimum wage.
Is this sustainable? No. Not at all. Do they care? Most of them don't. The ones who do are not helping us by funding progressive education and grassroots civic activism.
The government like the Democratic Party is only technically "open" to the public to participate in but if you can't afford to run for office and none but the wealthy can and if the Democratic (or Republican) Party makes no effort to promote participation in things like Central Committee meetings and so on, then is it really open? Is it?
I went to look at my LA CDP (Los Angeles Dem Party) website for a listing of the Central Committee meeting and it had a map showing Washington State and the wrong address listed. Incompetance or neglect I don't know but my experience is that in any organization people who run it dislike having new people come in and threaten to take their jobs from them. So they don't make it easy to do so Thom.
That's why the so-called Super Delegates you believe would swing over to Bernie like they did Obama actually would not do so this time! See Bernie unlike candidate Obama has promised to enact Public Financing of Campaigns making it easier for Jane or Joe Citizen to run for office negating the power of incumbency and party nepetism. THAT is a big threat to the party insiders the status quo Super Delegates and they will fight to stop Bernie as a result.
A revolution is coming Thom. Those who make change impossible by peaceful means invite violence. We all don't want that! But since when has power ever given us anything without civil disobedience ie a fight? My dad lived through the Watts riots, I experienced the Rodney King riots and saw the city burning. Tragic events both with working class people burning down our own few possessions really. I wish we were Iceland.
Thanks,
Joseph Segal