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A tax inversion or corporate tax inversion is a form of tax avoidance where a corporation restructures so that the current parent is replaced by a foreign parent, and the original parent company becomes a subsidiary of the foreign parent, thus moving its tax residence to the foreign country. Executives and operational headquarters can stay in the original country. The US definition requires that the original shareholders remain a majority control of the post-inverted company. In US federal legislation a company which has been restructured in this manner is referred to as an "inverted domestic corporation", and the term "corporate expatriate" is also used. [1]
The majority of the less than 100 material tax inversions recorded since 1993 have been of US corporations (85 inversions), seeking to pay less to the US corporate tax system. The only other jurisdiction to experience a material outflow of tax inversions was the United Kingdom from 2007 to 2010 (22 inversions); however, UK inversions largely ceased after the reform of the UK corporate tax code from 2009 to 2012.
The first inversion was McDermott International in 1983. [lower-alpha 1] Reforms by US Congress in 2004 halted "naked inversions", however, the size of individual "merger inversions" grew dramatically; in 2014 alone, they exceeded the cumulative value of all inversions since 1983. New US Treasury rules in 2014–16 blocked several major inversions (e.g. 2016 USD$160 billion Pfizer–Allergan plc inversion, and the 2015 USD$54 billion AbbVie–Shire plc inversion), and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) further reduced the taxation incentives of inversions. As of June 2019 [update] , there have been no material US inversions post-2017, and notably, two large Irish-based tax inversion targets were acquired in non-tax inversion transactions, where the acquirer remained in their higher-tax jurisdiction: Shire plc by Japanese pharma Takeda for US$63 billion (announced in 2018, closed in 2019), and Allergan plc by U.S. pharma AbbVie for US$64 billion (announced in 2019, expected to close in 2020); in addition, Broadcom Inc. redomesticated to the United States.
As of June 2019 [update] the most popular destination in history for US corporate tax inversions is Ireland (with 22 inversions); Ireland was also the most popular destination for UK inversions. The largest completed corporate tax inversion in history was the US$48 billion merger of Medtronic with Covidien plc in Ireland in 2015 (the vast majority of their merged revenues are still from the US). The largest aborted tax inversion was the US$160 billion merger of Pfizer with Allergan plc in Ireland in 2016. The largest hybrid-intellectual property (IP) tax inversion was the US$300 billion acquisition of Apple Inc.'s IP by Apple Ireland in 2015.
While the legal steps taken to execute a tax inversion can be complex as the corporations need to avoid both regulatory and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) hurdles in re-locating their tax residence to a lower-tax jurisdiction, simplified examples are available; such as provided in August 2014, by Bloomberg journalist Matt Levine when reporting on the Burger King tax inversion to Canada. Before the 2017 TCJA, U.S. companies paid a corporate tax rate of 35% on all income they earned in both the U.S., and abroad, but they obtained a credit against their U.S. tax liability for the amount of any foreign tax paid. Given that the U.S. tax rate of 35% was one of the highest in the world [ citation needed ], the corporate's maximum global tax liability should, therefore, have been 35%. This pre-TCJA U.S. tax system, was referred to as a "worldwide tax system", as opposed to the "territorial tax system" used by almost all other developed countries. Levine explained:
If we're incorporated in the U.S., we'll pay 35 percent taxes on our income in the U.S. and Canada and Mexico and Ireland and Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, but if we're incorporated in Canada [who operate a "territorial tax system"], we'll pay 35 percent on our income in the U.S. but 15 percent in Canada and 30 percent in Mexico and 12.5 percent in Ireland and zero percent in Bermuda and zero percent in the Cayman Islands.
By changing its headquarters to another country with a territorial tax regime, the corporation typically pays taxes on its earnings in each of those countries at the specific rates of each country. In addition, the corporation executing the tax inversion may find additional tax avoidance strategies, called § Earnings Stripping tools, that can shift untaxed profits from the higher-tax locations (e.g. the U.S.), to the new lower-tax country to which the corporation has now inverted. [5]
The following are notable events in the history of US and non-US corporate tax inversions:
While corporates who execute inversions downplay taxation in their rationale for the transaction, and instead emphasise strategic rationale, [41] [22] research is unanimous that tax was the driver for most US tax inversions from 1983 to 2016. [19] [10] [6] [42]
The main objective of these transactions was tax savings, and they involved little to no shift in actual economic activity.
Inversions are undertaken to reduce taxes
One such strategy is a corporate inversion, which is executed to result in a significant reduction in worldwide tax payments for a company.
US research on US tax inversions breaks down the tax savings into three areas:
In 2015, the UK HMRC identified high corporate taxes and a "worldwide tax system" for the wave of UK tax inversions to Ireland in 2007–2010. [30]
In September 2017, the US Congressional Budget Office analyzed the post-tax outcomes of US corporate tax inversions from 1994 to 2014, and found the following: [53]
A 2014 report by the Financial Times on US pharmaceutical tax inversions during 2012–2014, showed their aggregate worldwide tax rates dropped from 26 to 28% to 16–21%. [52] A similar 2014 study by Forbes Magazine using the projected post-inversion tax rates from the inverting corporates also confirmed the same movement in tax rates. [56]
A number of studies have shown that the after-tax returns to original company shareholders post-inversion are more mixed, and often poor:
In 2017, the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) stated that it only considered a transaction to be a tax inversion under the following conditions: [62]
In all definitions, the executive management (e.g. CEO, CFO), and the substantive offices and assets of the company, can remain in the US. [43] [63] For example, the executives of Medtronic, who executed the largest tax inversion in history by legally moving Medtronic to Ireland in 2015, remained in their main operational headquarters of Fridley, Minnesota in the US. All of Medtronic's substantive business and management operations still reside in the US. [22] [64]
Sometimes, the 2015 US$70 billion merger of Allergan plc and Activis plc, both previous US tax inversions to Ireland, are listed as a tax inversion (and the largest executed inversion in history). However, as both companies were legally Irish companies, their merger was not considered a tax inversion. [65] [23]
In 2019, in the "anatomy of an inversion" the US Congressional Research Service (CRS) classified US tax inversion into three broad types: [66]
In 1994, US tax academic James R. Hines Jr. published the important Hines–Rice paper, which showed that many US corporations had chosen to shift profits to tax havens, instead of outright moving to the tax haven by executing a tax inversion. [11] Hines, and later again with US tax academic Dhammika Dharmapala, would show that base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS), was an even greater loss of corporate tax revenue to the US exchequer, than full tax inversions. [69]
In 2018, academics identified a new class of tax inversion as details of Apple's Q1 2015 leprechaun economics transaction in Ireland emerged. [70] [71] [72] While Apple's tax residence remained in the US, [73] [74] Apple moved the legal tax residence of a large part of its business to Ireland in a US$300 billion quasi-tax inversion of its intellectual property (IP). [75] [71] [72]
The use of IP-based BEPS tools (e.g. Apple and Google's Double Irish and Microsoft's Single Malt), [45] [52] has been attributed as the driver for the reduction in the marginal aggregate effective US corporate tax rate, falling from circa 30% in 2000, to circa 20% by 2016 (see graphic). [76] For example, the CAIA BEPS tool Apple used in 2015 would give Apple an "effective tax rate" of under 2.5% on the worldwide profits Apple generated on this IP that was shifted to Ireland. [77] [52]
However, these IP assets had normally been housed in small Caribbean tax haven-type locations; Apple has been reported as using Bermuda and Jersey to house its IP. [78] [52] Such locations could not meet the 25% "substantive business test" of regulation T.D. 9592 for an inversion. However, Apple's 2015 BEPS transaction to Ireland was the first time a US corporation moved a substantial amount of IP to a full OECD jurisdiction where it already had a "substantive business operations". [73]
In July 2018, Seamus Coffey, Chairperson of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and author of the Irish State's 2016 review of the Irish Corporate Tax Code, [79] posted that Ireland could see a "boom" in the onshoring of U.S. IP, via the CAIA BEPS tool, between now and 2020, when the Double Irish is fully closed. [80] In February 2019, Brad Setser from the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote a New York Times article highlighting issues with TCJA in terms of combatting power of BEPS tools. [81]
In 2017, the Congressional Budgetary Office reported that of the 60 US tax inversions from 1983 to 2015 which the CBO officially recognize, over 40% came from three industries: Pharmaceutical preparations (9), Fire, marine, and casualty insurance (7), and Oil & Gas Well Drilling and Servicing (7). [82]
The US Oil & Gas Well Drilling and Servicing and US Casualty Insurance inversions are mostly associated with the first wave of US tax inversions before 2004; [10] the very first US tax inversion, McDermott International in 1983, was from the Oil & Gas Well Drilling and Servicing industry. [4] These US companies that inverted in these two industries shared the common attributes of having mostly international client bases, and of having assets that were easily "portable" outside of the US. The assets of the Oil & Gas corporate tax inversions were already mostly held in securitization vehicles often legally located in offshore financial centres. Similarly, the assets of the Casualty Insurance corporate tax inversions were also mainly global reinsurance contracts that were also legally located in offshore financial centres. [82]
The US Life Sciences industry (Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices) became a significant part of the second wave of US tax inversions from 2012 to 2016. It also involved some of the largest and most public executed US tax inversions (e.g. Medtronic (2015) and Perrigo (2013)), as well as the aborted 2016 inversion of Pfizer and Allergan, which would have been largest inversion in history at US$160 billion.
In July 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported that the circa 4% "effective tax rate" being paid by US pharmaceuticals who inverted to Ireland made them highly acquisitive of other US firms (i.e. they could afford to pay more to acquire US competitors and redomicile them to Ireland). The WSJ listed the extensive post-inversion acquisitions of Activis/Allergan, Endo, Mallinckrodt and Horizon. [83]
In August 2016, after the US Treasury blocked Pfizer's US$160 billion tax inversion to Ireland with Allergan, Bloomberg stated that "Big Pharma Murdered Tax Inversions". [84]
An important concept in inversions are the tools required to shift untaxed profits from the corporate's existing operating jurisdictions to the new destination. This is known as earnings stripping. Without these tools, a tax inversion might not deliver the expected tax savings, as the profits might arrive at the new destination having incurred full taxes in the jurisdictions in which they were sourced. [85] [86] [43]
For example, when Medtronic inverted to Ireland in 2015, over 60% of the merged group's revenue still came from the US healthcare system. [22] Similarly, over 80% of Allergan's revenues comes from the US healthcare system post its Irish inversion. [23] Medtronic and Allergan, therefore, could only avail of Ireland's lower effective tax rates if they could shift US-sourced profits to Ireland without incurring full US corporate taxes. Studies have shown that the earnings stripping of US-sourced earnings is a critical component of reducing the aggregate effective tax rate post the inversion (per § Evidence of tax savings). [87]
The two main types of tools used in tax inversions are: [49]
§ Countermeasures created in the 2017 TCJA, directly targeted debt-based tools via the new BEAT tax, and introduce a competing US IP-based BEPS tool called the FDII tax. [26]
There have been several estimates of the aggregate cost of US tax inversions to the US exchequer (also called the erosion of the US tax base). However, there is a significant variation in these aggregate estimates of tax erosion over the years due to two specific factors:
The US Congressional Budget Office and the Congressional Research Service have cataloged 85 US tax inversions since 1983 to 2017 (the CBO does not recognize all of them as official tax inversions). Bloomberg used this data to identify the most attractive destinations for US inversions titled Tracking the Tax Runaways which won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, and was updated to 2018. [10]
The first wave of US tax inversions from 1996 to 2004 was mainly to Caribbean tax havens such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. These were mostly "naked inversions" where the company had little or no previous "substantial business activities" in the location. They also used debt-based earnings stripping tools to shift US profits to the new destination. The 2004 ACJA ended these types of "naked inversions" with IRS Section 7874. [91] [6]
A significantly larger second wave of US tax inversions from 2012 to 2016 was mainly to the OECD tax havens of Ireland, and after their 2009 reforms, to the United Kingdom. These inversions involved mergers with real companies that met the "substantial business activities" test of IRS Section 7874. These destinations also had advanced IP-based BEPS tools (e.g. the Irish CAIA tool, the Double Irish tool, the UK Patent box tool) that could deliver an "effective tax rate" closer to zero on profits shifted to the destination. [6] [45]
The destinations for the 85 US corporate tax inversions since 1983 are as follows: [10]
Destination | Total | Last inversion | Notable U.S. corporate tax inversions to the destination | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Year | Name | |||
Ireland | 21 | 2016 | Johnson Controls | Largest U.S. inversion in history, Medtronic (2015); plus 3rd Johnson (2016), 4th Eaton (2012), and 6th Perrigo (2013). [33] [34] |
Bermuda | 19 | 2015 | C&J Energy Services | |
England | 11 | 2016 | CardTronics | Post 2009–12 overhaul of tax-code, [92] attracted the 2nd–largest U.S. inversion in history, Liberty Global (2013). [33] [34] |
Canada | 8 | 2016 | Waste Connections | Attracted the 5th–largest U.S. inversion in history, Burger King (2014). [33] [34] |
Netherlands | 7 | 2015 | Mylan | |
The Cayman Islands | 5 | 2014 | Theravance Biopharma | |
Luxembourg | 4 | 2010 | Trinseo | |
Switzerland | 3 | 2007 | TE Connectivity | |
Australia | 1 | 2012 | Tronox | |
Israel | 1 | 2012 | Stratasys | |
Denmark | 1 | 2009 | Invitel Holdings | |
Jersey | 1 | 2009 | Delphi Automotive | |
British Virgin Islands | 1 | 2003 | Michael Kors Ltd. | |
Singapore | 1 | 1990 | Flextronics International | |
Panama | 1 | 1983 | McDermott International | Attracted the first U.S. inversion in history, McDermott International (1983). [6] |
A 2012 article in Tax Notes listed the 22 tax inversions of UK companies to other destinations from 2006 to 2010, until UK tax reform ceased further material inversions. [93] [94]
While the full list is not available, the US Tax Foundation listed the nine most important UK inversions of which six went to Ireland (Experian plc, WPP plc, United Business Media plc, Henderson Group plc, Shire plc, and Charter International), and one each went to Switzerland (Informa), Luxembourg (Regus), and the Netherlands (Brit Insurance). [30] [31] [32]
Few other jurisdictions outside of the US and the UK have experienced a material outflow of corporate tax inversions to other destinations. [95]
There have been three phases of initiatives that the US Government have taken to counter US corporate tax inversions:
In Q1 2018, U.S. multinationals like Pfizer announced in Q1 2018, a post-TCJA global tax rate for 2019 of circa 17%, which is close to the circa 15–16% 2019 tax rate guided by previous U.S. corporate tax inversions to Ireland including: Eaton, Allergan, and Medtronic. [100] In March 2018, the Head of Life Sciences in Goldman Sachs made the following comment:
"Now that [U.S.] corporate tax reform has passed, the advantages of being an inverted company are less obvious"
— Jami Rubin, Managing Director and Head of Life Sciences Research Group, Goldman Sachs (March 2018). [101]
In a report to Congress in March 2019, the Congressional Research Service noted that "there are also indications that most tax motivated inversions had already been discouraged by the 2016 regulations" and that with the addition of the since the 2017 TCJA that "Some firms appear to be considering reversing their headquarters [or past inversion] decision". [102]
In June 2019, U.S.-based AbbVie announced an agreement to acquire Irish-based Allergan plc for US$63 billion; however the acquisition would not be structured as a tax inversion, and that the Group would be domiciled in the U.S. for tax purposes. [27] AbbVie announced that post the 2017 TCJA, its effective tax rate was already lower than that of Irish-based Allergan plc at 9%, and that post the acquisition, it would rise to 13%. [29] In 2014 the U.S. Treasury effectively blocked AbbVie's attempt to execute a tax inversion with Irish-based Shire plc. [28]
After losing 22 tax inversions from 2007 to 2010, mostly to Ireland, the UK moved to reform its corporate tax code from 2009 to 2012, executing the following: [31]
In 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported that "In U.S. tax inversion Deals, U.K. is now a winner". [35] In a 2015 presentation, the UK HMRC showed that many of the outstanding UK inversions from 2007 to 2010 period had returned to the UK as a result of the tax reforms (most of the rest had entered into subsequent transactions and could not return, including Shire). [30]
Of the 85 tax inversions executed by US corporates to other jurisdictions, the following are notable:
Of the 22 inversions executed by UK companies to other jurisdictions, the following are notable:
Corporate haven, corporate tax haven, or multinational tax haven is used to describe a jurisdiction that multinational corporations find attractive for establishing subsidiaries or incorporation of regional or main company headquarters, mostly due to favourable tax regimes, and/or favourable secrecy laws, and/or favourable regulatory regimes.
IDA Ireland is the agency responsible for the attraction and retention of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) into Ireland. The agency was founded in 1949 as the Industrial Development Authority and placed on a statutory footing a year later. In 1969 it became a non-commercial autonomous state-sponsored body. Today it is a semi-state body that plays an important role in Ireland's relationship with foreign investors, with multinationals accounting for 10.2% of employment and 66% of Irish exports. The agency partners with investors to help them to begin or expand their operations in the Irish market. It provides funding support to research and development projects, and has a number of direct support mechanisms, including employment and training grants.
Medtronic plc is an American medical device company. The company's operational and executive headquarters are in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and its legal headquarters are in Ireland due to its acquisition of Irish-based Covidien in 2015. While it primarily operates in the United States, it operates in more than 150 countries and employs over 90,000 people. It develops and manufactures healthcare technologies and therapies.
Ireland's Corporate Tax System is a central component of Ireland's economy. In 2016–17, foreign firms paid 80% of Irish corporate tax, employed 25% of the Irish labour force, and created 57% of Irish OECD non-farm value-add. As of 2017, 25 of the top 50 Irish firms were U.S.–controlled businesses, representing 70% of the revenue of the top 50 Irish firms. By 2018, Ireland had received the most U.S. § Corporate tax inversions in history, and Apple was over one–fifth of Irish GDP. Academics rank Ireland as the largest tax haven; larger than the Caribbean tax haven system.
Perrigo Company plc is an American Irish–registered manufacturer of private label over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, and while 70% of Perrigo's net sales are from the U.S. healthcare system, Perrigo is legally headquartered in Ireland for tax purposes, which accounts for 0.60% of net sales. In 2013, Perrigo completed the sixth-largest US corporate tax inversion in history when it reregistered its tax status to Ireland to avoid U.S. corporate taxes. Perrigo maintains its corporate headquarters in Grand Rapids, Michigan, within Michigan State University's Grand Rapids Innovation Park.
Allergan, Inc. was an American global pharmaceutical company focused on eye care, neurosciences, medical dermatology, medical aesthetics, breast enhancement, obesity intervention and urologics. Allergan, Inc. was formed in 1948, incorporated in 1950 and became a public company in 1970. It ceased operation in 2015 when it was acquired by Irish-based Actavis plc, who then renamed the group as Allergan plc.
Actavis Generics is a global pharmaceutical company focused on acquiring, developing, manufacturing and marketing branded pharmaceuticals, generic and over-the-counter medicines, and biologic products. Actavis has a commercial presence across approximately 100 countries. The company has global headquarters in Dublin, Ireland and administrative headquarters in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey, United States.
A tax haven is a term, sometimes used negatively and for political reasons, to describe a place with very low tax rates for non-domiciled investors, even if the official rates may be higher.
The Double Irish arrangement was a base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) corporate tax avoidance tool used mostly by United States multinationals since the late 1980s to avoid corporate taxation on non-U.S. profits. It was the largest tax avoidance tool in history and by 2010 was shielding US$100 billion annually in US multinational foreign profits from taxation, and was the main tool by which US multinationals built up untaxed offshore reserves of US$1 trillion from 2004 to 2018. Traditionally, it was also used with the Dutch Sandwich BEPS tool; however, 2010 changes to tax laws in Ireland dispensed with this requirement.
Horizon Therapeutics was a biopharmaceutical company focused on researching, developing, and commercializing medicines that address critical needs for people impacted by rare and rheumatic diseases. Horizon primarily markets products in the United States, which represented 97% of Horizon's 2019 worldwide sales. Amgen acquired the company in October 2023.
Base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) refers to corporate tax planning strategies used by multinationals to "shift" profits from higher-tax jurisdictions to lower-tax jurisdictions or no-tax locations where there is little or no economic activity, thus "eroding" the "tax-base" of the higher-tax jurisdictions using deductible payments such as interest or royalties. For the government, the tax base is a company's income or profit. Tax is levied as a percentage on this income/profit. When that income / profit is transferred to another country or tax haven, the tax base is eroded and the company does not pay taxes to the country that is generating the income. As a result, tax revenues are reduced and the government is detained. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) define BEPS strategies as "exploiting gaps and mismatches in tax rules". While some of the tactics are illegal, the majority are not. Because businesses that operate across borders can utilize BEPS to obtain a competitive edge over domestic businesses, it affects the righteousness and integrity of tax systems. Furthermore, it lessens deliberate compliance, when taxpayers notice multinationals legally avoiding corporate income taxes. Because developing nations rely more heavily on corporate income tax, they are disproportionately affected by BEPS.
Companies of the United States with untaxed profits deals with those U.S. companies whose offshore subsidiaries earn profits which are retained in foreign countries to defer paying U.S. corporate tax. The profits of United States corporations are subject to a federal corporate tax rate of 21%. In principle, the tax is payable on all profits of corporations, whether earned domestically or abroad. However, overseas subsidiaries of U.S. corporations are entitled to a tax deferral of profits on active income until repatriated to the U.S., and are regarded as untaxed. When repatriated, the corporations are entitled to a foreign tax credit for taxes paid in foreign countries.
Allergan plc is an American, Irish-domiciled pharmaceutical company that acquires, develops, manufactures and markets brand name drugs and medical devices in the areas of medical aesthetics, eye care, central nervous system, and gastroenterology. The company is the maker of Botox.
Dutch Sandwich is a base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) corporate tax tool, used mostly by U.S. multinationals to avoid incurring European Union withholding taxes on untaxed profits as they were being moved to non-EU tax havens. These untaxed profits could have originated from within the EU, or from outside the EU, but in most cases were routed to major EU corporate-focused tax havens, such as Ireland and Luxembourg, by the use of other BEPS tools. The Dutch Sandwich was often used with Irish BEPS tools such as the Double Irish, the Single Malt and the Capital Allowances for Intangible Assets ("CAIA") tools. In 2010, Ireland changed its tax-code to enable Irish BEPS tools to avoid such withholding taxes without needing a Dutch Sandwich.
Leprechaun economics was a term coined by economist Paul Krugman to describe the 26.3 per cent rise in Irish 2015 GDP, later revised to 34.4 per cent, in a 12 July 2016 publication by the Irish Central Statistics Office (CSO), restating 2015 Irish national accounts. At that point, the distortion of Irish economic data by tax-driven accounting flows reached a climax. In 2020, Krugman said the term was a feature of all tax havens.
The OECD G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project is an OECD/G20 project to set up an international framework to combat tax avoidance by multinational enterprises ("MNEs") using base erosion and profit shifting tools. The project, led by the OECD's Committee on Fiscal Affairs, began in 2013 with OECD and G20 countries, in a context of financial crisis and tax affairs. Currently, after the BEPS report has been delivered in 2015, the project is now in its implementation phase, 116 countries are involved including a majority of developing countries. During two years, the package was developed by participating members on an equal footing, as well as widespread consultations with jurisdictions and stakeholders, including business, academics and civil society. And since 2016, the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on BEPS provides for its 140 members a platform to work on an equal footing to tackle BEPS, including through peer review of the BEPS minimum standards, and monitoring of implementation of the BEPS package as a whole.
Modified gross national income is a metric used by the Central Statistics Office (Ireland) to measure the Irish economy rather than GNI or GDP. GNI* is GNI minus the depreciation on Intellectual Property, depreciation on leased aircraft and the net factor income of redomiciled PLCs.
Feargal O'Rourke is an Irish accountant and corporate tax expert, who was the managing partner of PwC in Ireland. He is considered the architect of the Double Irish tax scheme used by U.S. firms such as Apple, Google and Facebook in Ireland, and a leader in the development of corporate tax planning tools, and tax legislation, for U.S. multinationals in Ireland.
Ireland has been labelled as a tax haven or corporate tax haven in multiple financial reports, an allegation which the state has rejected in response. Ireland is on all academic "tax haven lists", including the § Leaders in tax haven research, and tax NGOs. Ireland does not meet the 1998 OECD definition of a tax haven, but no OECD member, including Switzerland, ever met this definition; only Trinidad & Tobago met it in 2017. Similarly, no EU–28 country is amongst the 64 listed in the 2017 EU tax haven blacklist and greylist. In September 2016, Brazil became the first G20 country to "blacklist" Ireland as a tax haven.
Steris plc is an Irish-domiciled medical equipment company specializing in sterilization and surgical products for the US healthcare system. Steris is operationally headquartered in Mentor, Ohio, but has been legally registered since 2018 in Dublin, Ireland for tax purposes; it was previously registered in the United Kingdom from 2014 to 2018. Steris is quoted on the NYSE, and is a constituent of the S&P 500 Index.
We identify 41 countries and regions as tax havens for the purposes of U. S. businesses. Together the seven tax havens with populations greater than one million (Hong Kong, Ireland, Liberia, Lebanon, Panama, Singapore, and Switzerland) account for 80 percent of total tax haven population and 89 percent of tax haven GDP.
The four OECD member countries Luxembourg, Ireland, Belgium and Switzerland, which can also be regarded as tax havens for multinationals because of their special tax regimes.
Omar Ishrak, the Bangladesh-born chairman and chief executive of Medtronic, says that buying Covidien was as much about corporate strategy as tax: "We just followed the rules and the deal was done based on strategic merits. So that's why it's more resilient to some of the obvious things that the Treasury did"
If current policy does not change, the agency projects future tax-avoiding deals will reduce tax receipts from corporations by 2.5 percent in 2027 — or $12 billion.
The deal will return Allergan to the U.S., at least for tax purposes.
In 2007 to 2009, WPP, United Business Media, Henderson Group, Shire, Informa, Regus, Charter and Brit Insurance all left the UK. By 2015, WPP, UBM, Henderson Group, Informa and Brit Insurance have all returned
"Right now, it's safe to say that the U.K. is the preferred country of destination for inverted companies, given the favorable tax regime and the non-tax attractions of the U.K.," said Mr. Willens, a former managing director at Lehman Brothers.
And in 2012, the water technology company Pentair merged with Tyco Flow Control and "re-domiciled" its corporation from Golden Valley to Switzerland. That merger — accomplished through a tax-free "Reverse Morris Trust" — lowered Pentair's corporate tax rate from 29 to 24.6 percent. Determined to save even more, Pentair relocated again on June 3 from its Swiss headquarters to Ireland, which has a tax rate of roughly 12.5 percent.
But even as it rushed to complete the biggest tax-avoidance deal in the history of corporate America, it continued to promote the strategic and economic benefits of the merger. Any pretense to a motivation other than dodging taxes has now been wiped away.
Germany taxes only 5% of the active foreign business profits of its resident corporations. [..] Furthermore, German firms do not have incentives to structure their foreign operations in ways that avoid repatriating income. Therefore, the tax incentives for German firms to establish tax haven affiliates are likely to differ from those of U.S. firms and bear strong similarities to those of other G–7 and OECD firms.
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(help)Dozens of US multinationals have moved their tax base outside the country to escape the high tax rate, global reach and perverse incentives of a system that has encouraged companies to build up a $1tn cash pile trapped overseas.
The U.S. company is in black, as is the share of the merged company its current shareholders will own; it must be less than 80% for the tax trick to work under the current law.
Since its "inversion," the company has been awarded more than $40 million in federal contracts and its executives still work at its Fridley campus.
It focuses particularly on the dominant approach within the economics literature on income shifting, which dates back to Hines and Rice (1994) and which we refer to as the "Hines-Rice" approach.
Apple has changed its own corporate structure, restructured a new Irish Beps tool called Capital Allowances for Intangible Assets (CAIA), also nicknamed the "Green Jersey". The bookkeeping change was so significant that it contributed to the extraordinary one-off revision in Irish GDP for 2015 by 26 per cent (later revised to 34.4 per cent).
Apple restructured its tax operations in 2015 using the State's capital allowance for intangible assets (CAIA), helping trigger the so-called Leprechaun Economics effect that year when the Irish economy suddenly surged by 26pc
By April 2018, economists estimated Apple had onshored [to Ireland] $300 billion of intellectual property from Jersey in Q1 2015, appartently the largest recorded BEPS action in history. This was equivalent to over 20% of Irish GDP"
IP onshoring is something we should be expecting to see much more of as we move towards the end of the decade. Buckle up!
Horizon and other inverted companies are using their new, lower tax rates to turbocharge corporate takeovers. Applying those rates, often in the midteens, to profits of companies in the US, with a federal corporate rate of 35%, can yield extra savings on top of those traditionally wrung from mergers. Moreover, unlike the US, Ireland and most other countries, only tax profits earned in-country, giving companies the freedom and incentive to shift income to still-lower-tax jurisdictions.
Often, the group can shift debt to the American unit, or have it borrow from the foreign parent. It can then pay interest to the parent while deducting the sums involved from its American taxes. Several studies have found such "earnings stripping" common when companies invert.
[..] we infer that inversion–related ETR reductions are due to U.S. earnings stripping.
From 2007 to 2010, a total of 22 companies inverted out of the UK. See Martin A. Sullivan, Eaton Migrates to Ireland: Will the U.S. Now Go Territorial?, 135 Tax Notes 1303 (June 11, 2012).
While lawmakers generally refer to the new system as a "territorial" tax system, it is more appropriately described as a hybrid system.
The new tax code addresses the historical competitive disadvantage of U.S.–based multinationals in terms of tax rates and international access to capital, and helps level the playing field for U.S. companies, Pfizer CEO Ian Read.