All you have to do is move.
So what would you rather pay, 39%, 21% or 12.5%?
The top US tax rate on American firms that earn money overseas is around 39% if they repatriate those funds. In short, they're taxed twice, nice work if you're a government doing the taxing and can get it.
Should you locate your firm in the UK that rate drops to 21%, an 18% difference. Would that wet your pocketbook appetite? But, if you're fortunate and you can find an opportunity to buy up a company that fits your mold in Ireland, you can pop your home office over there and cut that tax rate to 12.%.
If, as they teach in Business 101, you're heading up a publicly traded firm and your responsibility is to return maximum profits to your shareholders, the ones who technically own the firm, what's the questions again: Should you consider a move?
Last week among all the other news, these so-called tax inversion plays got hit over fears of more regulations and name-calling. Congress, and this includes both sides of the pathetic aisle, love to slop at the taxing trough. It's in their DNA.
They also like name-calling. It's a game they love to play. Part of it may stem from the fact that they are deserving of so many names themselves.
The firms seeking to do this are hardly un-American any more than you are if you decide to set up residence in, say, Nevada, a no income tax state, versus, say, Massachusetts, a very high tax state. If you own a business and move to Nevada, do you take your jobs with you? At least some of them.
Allowing politicians to pass punitive legislation to prohibit these moves is just one law away from denying you this same right. Think not at your own peril and the peril of any semblance of free movement in this nation.
Move to keep it legal.
t. man hatter
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