Inversion tactic costing U.S. billions

The latest gimmick for American corporations: Buy a foreign company, reincorporate your entire American company in the foreign country, and cut your corporate tax rate in America from the 35% for domestic firms to as low as 13%.

It’s called inversion. 

48 American companies have done this in the past decade, depriving the U.S. Treasury of billions of dollars. 

Pharmaceutical giant Milan, founded by West Virginia University’s late benefactor, Mylan Puskar, and Walgreen Co. are considering the maneuver.

Says Edward Kleinbard, a law professor and tax policy expert at the University of Southern California who served as the chief of staff for the Joint Committee on Taxation from 2007 to 2009: 

“The inversions are a canary in the coal mine.” If Congress waits “to get around to corporate tax reform, there won’t be a corporate tax base left to reform.”

To read the entire Fiscal Times article, click on http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/07/16/Corporate-Tax-Inversions-Will-Cost-US-Billions-and-We-ll-All-Pay?wpisrc=nl_wonk