Hillary Clinton slams tax-avoiding pharma mega deal

[riversedge]

Source: Reuters



7 Hours Ago Reuters


U.S. politicians condemned Pfizer's deal with Allergan as a tax dodge on Monday, bringing another round of hand-wringing in Washington over the corporate tax code, though legislative action before 2017 is unlikely.

Democrats heaped the most criticism on the New York-based drug maker, with Hillary Clinton accusing Pfizer of using legal loopholes to avoid its "fair share" of taxes in a deal that she said "will leave U.S. taxpayers holding the bag."

The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in the November 2016 election said she will propose steps to prevent more inversions, but she did not provide details. "We cannot delay in cracking down on inversions that erode our tax base," said the ex-U.S. secretary of state and former New York senator in a statement.

Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who has called for a corporate tax overhaul, called the deal "disgusting" in a statement, saying "our politicians should be ashamed."....................

Read more: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/24/hillary-clinton-slams-tax-avoiding-pharma-mega-deal.html

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BBC also has an article:



http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34909543





Pfizer's $160bn Allergan deal under pressure in the US

3 hours ago




Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption Hillary Clinton has criticised tax inversion deals

Drugs giant Pfizer's $160bn (£106bn) deal to buy botox-maker Allergan has been criticised by US politicians as an attempt to slash its tax bill.

The deal proposes that the merged company will maintain Allergan's Irish domicile, allowing Pfizer to escape relatively high US corporate tax rates.

Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential candidate, accused Pfizer of avoiding its "fair share" of taxes.

The deal would "leave US taxpayers holding the bag", she said.

.........................

The White House has so far declined to comment on the deal.

But US President Barack Obama has previously called such inversion deals unpatriotic and has tried to crack down on the practice.

Last week, the US Treasury Department unveiled new rules to clamp down on inversions, but tax experts said the change would not be sufficient to prevent the deal completing.

[Iliyah]

1. K & R

[elmac]

2. We will never be more then a third world country

as long as corporations keep getting away with this. May be great for wall street but its a death sentience for this countries future.

[NCjack]

3. My prediction: once again nothing will happen. (You guys better stop

doing this, you hear me? wink-wink; money falls into bribe buckets.) The DEM party needs to be cleansed.

[Ford_Prefect]

4. Anyone know what level of donation, if any, Pfizer made to the Clinton Foundation?

Serious question here, not hype.

[Android3.14]

5. As much as $28 million, including State Department issues

"Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer donated between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation and spent a portion of its $23.1 million in lobbying expenses from 2009 alone on issues at the State Department." - Washington Examiner

[riversedge]

6. Why Hillary Clinton Is Right About Pfizer

http://time.com/4125662/hillary-clinton-pfizer/


Why Hillary Clinton Is Right About Pfizer

Rana Foroohar @RanaForoohar

10:14 AM ET
The problem with tax "inversion" deals


Three cheers for Hillary Clinton and other politicians who are decrying Pfizer’s tax “inversion” deal that would allow it to take over an Irish pharma company and relocate there, thus saving $21 billion in American taxes. Tax inversion deals—mergers done pretty much for the sole purpose of saving tax money by moving to a foreign tax jurisdiction—have been on the rise for a while now. One of the many reasons they are so egregious is that the very firms that are most able to do them—including pharmaceutical and tech companies that have most of their value in intellectual property that can be easily relocated elsewhere—have also been the biggest beneficiaries of government help.

Pfizer and other such firms will argue that they need to pay lower taxes to fund the research that results in miracle drugs. But that is a myth. We credit the private sector for the innovation and growth in our economy. But a number of academics and policy thinkers, including University of Sussex economist Mariana Mazzucato, author of The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, argue powerfully that it is the government (and thus taxpayers) rather than the private sector that deserves the credit for such innovation. “Every major technological change in recent years traces most of its funding back to the state,” says Mazzucato, who backs the claim up with powerful statistics and anecdotes in her book. Most parts of the smartphone that make it smart–GPS, touchscreens, the Internet–were advanced by the Defense Department. Tesla’s batteries came out of a Department of Energy grant. Google’s search algorithm was boosted by a National Science Foundation innovation.

Likewise, many new drugs that have made big money for firms like Pfizer have come out of NIH research. The National Institutes of Health have spent almost a trillion dollars since its founding on the research that created both the pharmaceutical and the biotech sectors—with venture capitalists only entering biotech once the red carpet was laid down in the 1980s.

So why the mythology that the private sector deserves all the profits and the credit for innovation? ...............

[Angry Dragon]

7. greed