Obama Kills Largest Corporate Attempt Yet To Flee Overseas And Dodge Taxes

[babylonsister]

Obama Kills Largest Corporate Attempt Yet To Flee Overseas And Dodge Taxes

by Alan Pyke Apr 6, 2016 11:33 am


snip//

Founded in Brooklyn in 1849, Pfizer is one of the longest-running corporate success stories in the American economy. It has benefited from U.S. taxpayers’ investments in roads, education, scientific research, and global stability for almost 160 years, growing from $2,500 in seed money from Charles Pfizer’s father into the top-selling drugmaker in the world.

But for the past several years, Pfizer’s executives have tried desperately to move away. The company sought what’s called an inversion merger, in which two corporations combine and use accounting schemes to shift almost all of their profits into a country with low tax rates.

Pfizer tried to buy British drug titan AstraZeneca in 2014, hoping to slice a billion dollars per year off its U.S. tax bill. But it wouldn’t meet AstraZeneca’s asking price, and the would-be inversion fell apart.

A year and a half later, Pfizer and Allergan announced the largest inversion deal in history. The merger didn’t have the same flashy annual tax savings as the failed AstraZeneca bid would have delivered, but it would have allowed Pfizer to permanently avoid U.S. taxes on huge cash reserves it currently holds offshore.

But the Pfizer-Allergan announcement came after inversions had become a hot topic in the political press rather than just the financial pages. A series of high-profile corporate expatriations to duck American taxes had prompted a populist backlash, and the White House had begun explicitly shaming inverters as unpatriotic.

To put force to those words, the Obama administration began taking a series of independent steps to discourage inversions. The highly technical steps chipped away at the financial incentives that lead companies to invert in the first place.

The most recent of those came this week, leading Pfizer to abandon its latest inversion. The government didn’t act to block the merger, but rather to negate the tax benefits that were Pfizer’s primary reason for trying to shift its official headquarters abroad while continuing to operate in the United States.

more...

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2016/04/06/3767056/pfizer-pays-150-million-escape-merger/

[Jackie Wilson Said]

1. Like I have repeatedly said , you are gonna miss him when he is gone.

[cprise]

28. Some facts: He lobbied for the Panama FTA and

the US itself is becoming the world's largest tax evasion haven on his watch.

[Jitter65]

30. that allowed us to get more info on tax havens and who was doing it. nt

[malaise]

2. K & R

GObama!

[Qutzupalotl]

3. Pfizer can go pfuck themselves.

Unpatriotic ingrates.

[ozone_man]

4. Too little, too late.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-05/rotschild-admits-america-biggest-tax-haven-world-obama-slams-tax-evasion

Let Bernie do a clean sweep. The U.S. is becoming the largest tax haven, and under Obama's watch. One can only imagine what tax havens would appear with Clintons.

[saturnsring]

5. god im so sick of the miracle man sanders stories

[Dont call me Shirley]

13. Like this...

[pampango]

6. I love me some Bernie but see no need to belittle Obama in the process. n/t

[stupidicus]

19. indeed the BHO defenders were shown to be impotent

and wholly in capable of defending against the gross hypocrisy charge.

The ONLY thing most of them appear to be good at is changing the subject...

U.S.

The United States is more of a cause for concern than any other individual country, according to the Financial Secrecy Index, because of both the size of its offshore sector, and also its rather wayward attitude to international cooperation and reform.

The U.S. provides a wide array of secrecy and tax-free facilities for non-residents, both at a federal level and at the level of individual states.

Though the U.S. has been a pioneer in defending itself from foreign secrecy jurisdictions, aggressively taking on the Swiss banking establishment and setting up its technically quite strong Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), it provides little information in return to other countries, making it a formidable, harmful and irresponsible secrecy jurisdiction at both the federal and state levels. http://www.newsweek.com/panama-papers-top-ten-tax-havens-where-money-hidden-444512

[NCjack]

20. Should have been done day-1 of the Obama Administration. Being done now because of the

political heat being applied by Bernie to the 3rd-way Democrats.

[beastie boy]

7. So much for the evil neo-liberal Third Way Obama...

Just like the labels the right wing tried to pin on him, the left wing labels are just flying off of Obama.

[FighttheFuture]

9. TPP, all teed up. Social Security "Grand Bargain". Not exactly comforting.

Unless you are a third-way neo-liberal.

[beastie boy]

12. Then let's be fair and call Obama a Roosevelt Democrat based on his latest action.

Or, if you wish, you may choose any other label that signifies a good guy in your dog whistle call book.

[whathehell]

17. LOL..You don't get called anything for one action..The poster listed two and I could

add one more -- His total failure to support unions during his tenure -- No 'card check', no support when Wisconsin

rose up against Scott Walker's attempted union massacre.

[beastie boy]

18. Let me get this straight... you get broadly stereotyped for three actions, but you don't get any

credit for one.

Not that there aren't more than one... Lily Ledbetter, government takeover of GM, extension of unemployment benefits, Obamacare...

[truebluegreen]

21. Ledbetter was a hold-over

and Obamacare is a Republican-designed program which is why 1) it is complex and clunky; 2) it has lame/no cost controls or public option; and 3) it is difficult for Democrats to like or defend. Other two actions were good of course but imo don't outweigh other actions and inactions. On balance I would say that certainly Obama is better than any Republican, and worse than Bernie would be. If you need to change the course of a nation, tweaking the existing system (i.e. propping up the status quo) is not sufficient.

[whathehell]

22. I give him credit for what he's done..

I just wish he had pushed back more against corporatism.

[FighttheFuture]

26. You mean let's be a stupid sucker and call him that. While you may that, I am not.

You can look at your fantasies, I look at his actions. They are very pro-corporate, often at the expense of the people of this country.

I can give him credit for this but I cannot say I understand why he is doing it. Perhaps he's trying to stave off another economic collapse, of which things like this will bring us closer to it. Maybe he's trying to keep some more competition (such as it is) int he market place, which will only hep the ACA. There can be a number of reasons, but I do not think they are because he's some liberal beacon, A "Roosevelt" in disuse. That's your delusion.

[DirkGently]

8. Excellent. n/t

[tblue37]

10. Gobama! nt

[Sunlei]

11. Wish we could have another Four Years of Obama

[Dont call me Shirley]

14. Good!

[marble falls]

15. Should have been done seven years ago. I'll never eat at Burger King again.

[passiveporcupine]

16. Thank you Obama, an unsung hero at times

Pfizer, one of our leading pharmaceutical industries, who wants to reduce taxes on their profits.

Pfizer makes 39.2 billlion according to wikivest. I think it's OK to tax them.

[Hekate]

23. We are going to miss the hell out of this POTUS

[AgadorSparticus]

24. It's damn near criminal how he has been treated. I am so proud to have voted for him twice. nt.

[lonestarnot]

25. What happened to all of the obstructionists?

[suffragette]

27. "chipped away at the financial incentives that lead companies to invert in the first place."

Proving it CAN be done when there is the will to do it.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

29. Must judge Obama by his actions. 2009-2016 FAIL, last 2 weeks Encouraged

Encouraged but tempered. We've been clamouring about offshore tax havens for years. But they're so 2000s. Let's see what he does about everyone's new fav, onshore tax havens.

The World’s Favorite New Tax Haven Is the United States

Last September, at a law firm overlooking San Francisco Bay, Andrew Penney, a managing director at Rothschild & Co., gave a talk on how the world’s wealthy elite can avoid paying taxes.
His message was clear: You can help your clients move their fortunes to the United States, free of taxes and hidden from their governments.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-27/the-world-s-favorite-new-tax-haven-is-the-united-states]

[seabeckind]

31. Gotta question the timing

Student debt issue -- http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141412256

Quietly taking decisive action to cut banking down to size -- http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027745608

Kills Largest Corporate Attempt Yet To Flee Overseas And Dodge Taxes -- http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027743166

It's almost like he's finally recognized some of the issues that people have been talking about.

At a time when his friend is coming under fire for these very issues.