THEY WANT THE MONEY

We've written about this before.

Did you expect anything else from the U.S. government in general and this administration in particular. Two times now in the last year Pfizer has instigated a move, totally legal as it were, to move it headquarters offshore to lower its tax rate on foreign earnings.

Is this presently illegal? No! Move your business wherever you can afford to move it? Seems reasonable enough. Here in the U.S. not just businesses but people do it all the time, moving from the onerous tax rate in one state to either lower or no state taxes in another.

In some circles it's called altering your behavior.  This is not about what is a fair versus an onerous rate. This is about liberty, the right to do with your business or yourself whatever you deem necessary to create a better life.

These moves in the business world are called inversions. The government and many politicians of all stripes call it something much more vile: tax evasion, un-American, corporate treason and so forth.

Here the story from MarketWatch noting the U.S. Treasury Departments response.

The U.S. Treasury Department will release new “targeted guidance” designed to reduce the tax benefits available to U.S. companies that move their tax address overseas. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew informed lawmakers of the coming announcement in a letter on Wednesday. The letter provides no details on what the Treasury Department will do, though the government has previously said it was examining “earnings stripping,” a practice by which companies load up their U.S. 
operations with deductions and effectively push profits to low-tax countries.

“Later this week, we intend to issue additional targeted guidance to deter and reduce further the economic benefits of corporate inversions,” Lew wrote. “It is important to emphasize, however, that Treasury cannot stop inversions without new statutory authority. Unless and until Congress acts, creative accountants and lawyers will continue to find new ways for companies to move their tax residences overseas and avoid paying taxes here at home.”

The Treasury’s actions come as Pfizer Inc. PFE, +1.34% considers a merger with Allergan PLC that could be structured as an inversion, where the new company would be based outside the U.S.

They want the money.