Livingston & McLean County Labor
Bloomington & Normal Trades & Labor Assembly / Livingston & McLean Counties Building & Trades Council
  • Support Our Advertisers!
    click on their ad to visit their website
    Paused

    Central Illinois Orthopedic
    R&R Automotive
    Weber Electric
    M&M Estate Sales
    Original Niepagen Florists
    McCarron Law
    Felmley-Dickerson Company
    Felmley-Dickerson Company
    Mid-Illini Credit Union
    Chief City Mechanical
    SBC Heating & Air Conditioning
    Super Sign Sign Service
    Mark Lee Attorney
    Find a union roofer
    Kanoski Law
    Green Acres Realty
    Rowe Construction
    Chestnut Health Services
    Carmody-Flynn
    Bill's Full Service
    Ace in the Hole
    Grady's pizza
    << March 2024 >>
    S M T W T F S
    1 2
    3 4 5 6 7 8 9
    10 11 12 13 14 15 16
    17 18 19 20 21 22 23
    24 25 26 27 28 29 30
    31
    Newsletter Sign-up
    Sign-up for newsletter & email updates
    Follow Us!
    Facebook icon
  • Big Pharma merger - no wonder people are angry
    Posted On: Dec 02, 2015

    You work hard, you pay your taxes, you take care of your children -- yet it seems you are always falling behind.

    A recent corporate merger announcement reminds us again of how messed up our economic system is.

    Two giant, profitable drug companies announced a merger, a $160 billion  proposition.  Pfizer (Lipitor, Viagra) and Allergan (Botox) are going to combine their companies.  Is this to bring cheaper prices?  Better research to cure disease?  Nope -- it’s all about tax evasion.

    Allegran is headquartered in Ireland, Pfizer in New York City.  The new combined company will call Ireland “home,” though the New York offices will be open and executives are not moving to the Emerald Isle.  Corporate tax rates are lower in Ireland than in the U.S.A.  So although both these companies make considerable profits in this nation, their new corporate home will help insure that they pay less taxes here.

    There’s a term for this that only Wall Street could love -- Inversion.    Although doing business in the U.S., the company moves its corporate headquarters off-shore to evade U.S. taxes.

    Bermuda and the Cayman Islands are the top two nations for this subterfuge.  Companies don’t move there to relax on the white sand beaches, but simply to avoid paying their fair share.

    More than 64 percent of the Fortune 500 companies have opened a subsidiary in these tropical tax paradises.  

    Just to name names, Apple, which has three subsidiaries in tax havens, has $111.3 billion offshore. IBM, with 15 subsidiaries in tax havens, has $52.3 billion in foreign accounts. Citigroup, with 21 tax haven subsidiaries, holds $43.8 billion overseas, and PepsiCo, with 137 tax haven subsidiaries, has $34.1 billion offshore.

    “There ought to be a law” is the usual reaction.  But with our deadlocked Congress, don’t expect much soon.  Democrats are looking to create barriers to inversion, while Republicans say simplifying the U.S. tax code and lowering corporate rates would help keep that corporate cash here.

    Illinois Senator Richard Durbin (D) said about the planned drug merger: “When corporations choose to invert and don’t pay their fair share of taxes, they leave the rest of us to pick up the tab. That isn’t right, and I hope Pfizer will reconsider.  The Obama Administration has taken action to help curb this practice, but there are still loopholes in law that Congress must fix to eliminate incentives for companies to renounce their corporate citizenship and turn their backs on American taxpayers.”

    Durbin and other Senate Democrats have introduced legislation to tighten these inversions, but it’s expectations are low in a Republican-led Congress.

    Republican Pat Tiberi of Ohio, chair of the House Ways and Means committee, said “other nations have restructured their tax code to make themselves more attractive to multinational corporations and we must do the same...”

    These giant drug companies are also the ones who have blocked Medicare’s ability to negotiate drug prices and to make it illegal to fill U.S. prescriptions in Canada.   According to the International Federation of Health Plans, Americans pay anywhere from two to six times more than the rest of the world for brand name prescription drugs.

    Two states – Montana and Oregon – have enacted laws that impose state taxes on all corporate earnings by U.S. companies in certain countries they list as tax havens. Under that law, Montana collected an additional $7.2 million in corporate taxes in 2010.

    In school, we teach children the Pledge of Allegiance.  What flag do our “corporate citizens” pledge their allegiance to?
    - Mike Matejka


  • Livingston & McLean Counties Bldg & Trades Council

    Copyright © 2024.
    All Rights Reserved.

    Powered By UnionActive


  • Top of Page image