August 1, 2019

Wall Street Journal: Going Out of Style: Tax-Driven Deals to Move Corporate HQs Outside U.S.

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Through mergers, companies such as Allergan, Mylan, Medtronic and Johnson Controls PLC moved tax addresses abroad. The companies were often managed from the U.S.

“It was always a fiction that they were foreign,” said Steve Wamhoff, director for federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a liberal group critical of corporate tax avoidance.

Obama administration regulations curbed some benefits. Then, the 2017 law cut the U.S. corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, reducing incentives for profit shifting and using foreign-parented companies.

“The Trump administration’s response to this whole situation was to cut corporate taxes enough that corporations don’t really need to try that hard to avoid them,” Mr. Wamhoff said. Read more

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