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Astronuc
Staff Emeritus
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2023 Award
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Tax Break Used by Drug Makers Failed to Add Jobs
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/business/24drugtax.html
By ALEX BERENSON, NYTimes, July 32, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/business/24drugtax.html
By ALEX BERENSON, NYTimes, July 32, 2007
But hey, all those layoffs mean more profits!Two years ago, when companies received a big tax break to bring home their offshore profits, the president and Congress justified it as a one-time tax amnesty that would create American jobs.
Drug makers were the biggest beneficiaries of the amnesty program, repatriating about $100 billion in foreign profits and paying only minimal taxes. But the companies did not create many jobs in return. Instead, since 2005 the American drug industry has laid off tens of thousands of workers in this country.
And now drug companies are once again using complex strategies, many of them demonstrably legal, to shelter billions of dollars in profits in international tax havens, according to their financial statements and independent tax experts.
In one popular accounting move, companies declare their foreign markets as far more profitable than their American businesses — even though drug prices are typically higher in the United States than anywhere else in the world.
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